Food Safety Magazine, February/March 2012

PACKAGINGfor sale, and income to build small business.This process both recovers foodnormally lost and promotes economicdevelopment in these remote regions.The key is shelf life extension and safefood products.Effects of Restrictive RegulationsSome food losses result from foodregulations that are based on food attributesunrelated to foodsafety. Regulationsbased on color, shapeand size, for example,result in the destructionof tons of food.Other regulations maybe based on perceivedfood hazards that arenot scientifically established.The use of Alarthat decimated theapple industry in theU.S. Northwest andthe destruction offood that might containparts-per-trillionlevels of Sudan Red inthe UK, for example,were perceived threats that seriously impactedsegments of the food industry,but the regulatory reactions could not bejustified by a scientific risk/benefit analysis.Food safety is not served by such regulations(or public reactions based onfear), and significant food losses canresult.The Global Harmonization Initiative(GHI; www.globalharmonization.net)was formed through a network of scientificorganizations to facilitate the harmonizationof food safety regulationsand legislation. The objective emphasizesthat food regulations should bebased on a scientific evaluation of riskand strives to harmonize rules made byindividual governments and internationalregulatory bodies. GHI “anticipatesthat elimination of the regulatorydifferences will make it more attractivefor the private sector to invest in foodsafety R&D, consequently strengtheningthe competitiveness of each nation’s““Food safety can”be achieved byaltering theproduct from anunacceptable (buthealthy) state intoanother form.”food industry and of the industries supplyingthe food sector. Harmonizingglobal regulations will facilitate the applicationof new technologies, encouragingthe food industry to invest in such technologiesto ensure better safety and qualityfor consumers!” The result will bemore abundance of safe food.The FAO report on food losses presenteddifferences between food losses inthe developed and developingworld. Foodlosses in the developingworld tend to be relatedto financial, managerialand technicallimitations of food distributionbetween thefarmer and the consumer.Food losses andwaste in the developedworld mainly relate toconsumer behavior and“lack of coordinationbetween different actorsin the supply chain.” Apossibly surprising findingpresented in theFAO study was that“on a per capita basis, much more foodis wasted in the industrialized world thanin developing countries. We estimatethat the per capita food waste by consumersin Europe and North America is95–115 kg/year, while this figure in Sub-Saharan Africa and South/SoutheastAsia is only 6–11 kg/year.”Some of the food losses in the developedworld are based on regulations thatare not safety-based, as mentionedabove; some result from marketing practicessuch as refusing produce that is aless desirable size, shape or color or has aslight blemish and some are wastefulpractices. An example offered in theSave Food Congress was an EU regulationthat banned curved cucumbers.Farmers therefore could not sell curvedcucumbers, and they were not harvested.The EU later removed that regulation,but supermarkets still refuse to buycurved cucumbers, so they are still rolledinto the soil.Much waste is generated through avariety of practices at retail, restaurantsand hospitality entities and by consumers.Supermarkets, for example, stockshelves with every variety of baked productssuch that customers shopping nearclosing times have a full choice. Itemsnot sold become wasted. Restaurants,banquets and hospitality often serveconsiderably more food than required.Consumers often discard food productsthat reach their “best by” date, eventhough those products are perfectly safe.The approach to reducing these losses isprimarily education and a realization oftheir magnitude. I have offered ideas toeffect this through www.ift.org/food-technology/past-issues/2011/july/features/addressing-global-food-waste.aspx.ConclusionsPromoting food safety and securityon a global basis matters greatly to suppliersof processing and packaging materialsand machinery, as well as to thepopulations their products serve. TheU.S. population is about 310 million andthat of the EU around 500 million. Ourcombined total of 810 million, comparedwith the world population of 7 billion,means we constitute less than 12percent of the potential market for “appropriate”technologies. The remaining88 percent of the world’s population willrequire packaging materials and processingand packaging equipment to extendtheir food supplies. Development ofsmall-to-medium food enterprises willbegin a cycle of economic developmentthat builds resources to justify further development.The bottom line is that wecan extend safe and adequate food forhumanitarian and commercial impacts.nKenneth S. Marsh, Ph.D., CPP, is a consultant onfood, packaging and international trade throughKenneth S. Marsh & Associates Ltd.For more information on food packaging,please visitwww.foodsafetymagazine.com/signature.asp.26 F O O D S A F E T Y M A G A Z I N E