Importance of Food Safety
Is food safety being neglected?
Malaysians like food! It is a common knowledge that Malaysians take food very seriously, well the bad side is we are not as concerned about food safety
as we should. There were several obvious cases in the past which had shed light on the need to buckle up food safety in Malaysia like the incident in 1988 where several children died from a combination of boric acid and aflatoxin poisoning. However, gearing towards late 2008, quite a few numbers of noodle samples were shown to be containing traces of boric acid.
Maintaining food safety is a lengthy and huge process which requires utmost attention on every details from production to consumption. Thus a lot of ministries and agencies are involved in the process including the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, local authorities and Customs (for import and export of food). These government ministries and agencies are responsible in ensuring our food is not contaminated in any means whatsoever.
A brief recall on our history of food safety regulations here:
Well maybe most of you do not know this and will not pay much attention to this either, the Malaysia food safety standard is mainly regulated through the legislation of Food Act 1983. Together with Food Regulations, it came into force in October 1985. The objective is to provide protection to the public against food related hazards and frauds while promoting high quality food processing, manufacturing and consumption.
How to improvise on food safety?
Among the strategies for ensuring food safety are the following:
Constantly review and update legislation on food safety
Maintain and improve infrastructures that could help in food safety causes.
Enhance collaboration among government ministries, agencies, consumer bodies, academical institution, industry and international organizations
Focus on training manpower resources
Promote food safety awareness among consumers through education and campaigns.
Form teams of specialized inspectors and prosecutors to deal with scenarios like premises handling, regular inspection of processing and serving food as well as sampling of food to ensure they are not susceptible to contamination.
We do care on Food Safety!
The government both understands the importance of food safety and recognizes the gap that still exists in achieving it. So do we, Magcolm Solutions! We know that for a nation that exports seafood and fruits all over the world while importing basic foodstuff, food safety is a matter of national security as well as public health. Hence, we offer the best of our services and training to help you and your food business achieve the vision set by our country, Malaysia!
