Hazards and risks in the modern food chain

An important element of healthy food is its safety. To Understand the various ways ofdefining risk and interpret their meaning its necessary to know about the basicprinciples of hazards and risks in the modern food chain. To Understand the principlesof toxicological and microbiological risk assessments also food scientists need to knowhow to judge or reduce the possible risks. Based on new achievements every day foodscandals and recalls are published. One day there are dangerous bacteria in meat, andanother day fruits are recalled from the market because of the presence of pesticideresidues. According to some, meat needs to be cooked well, to prevent food-borneillness while others warn not to heat food to prevent the formation of toxic substances.In this paper we have a broad overview of hazards and risks in foods and elementaryknowledge on microbiological and toxicological risk assessment. This will enableeveryone to judge whether the different items, such as micro-organisms and chemicals,may cause harm to human health. The effects of food processing, the sharedresponsibility in the food chain, the prevention of food poisoning and how to evaluatethe microbiological and toxicological risks will have discussed. This paper is going tomake food scientists to be able to better weigh and critically interpret the informationoverload about risks in food, to define ways to reduce risks in food and finally makefood safer. we are interested in hazards and risks related to food and we focus on hazardsand risks of chemical and microbiological nature.(3)