Globalization, food safety issues & role of international standards

Introduction The concept of food safety is influenced by many factors, scientific and non-scientific. Results Globalization plays an important role, including issues raised by the lengthening of the food supply chain. Various aspects of the impacts of globalization on food are explored. Increasing numbers of chemical and microbial contaminants contributing to food safety issues require analytical methodologies for rapid detection, identification, and quantification. Conclusion International standards and their harmonization are needed for these to be effective globally. Current legislation (regulation) and related activities aim at bringing a high degree of food safety at reasonable cost. Objective The value being added by the MoniQA NoE to efforts of standardization and harmonization are a focus of this paper.