Methods to Ensure and Improve Quality of Agricultural Products

Procedures were established, in general, aimed at the maintenance and improvement of the quality of the process of value-adding. In modern times you have professional societies, governmental regulatory bodies (such as the FAO, RPO, WHO), and factory inspection systems, aimed at assuring the quality of products sold to consumers. These are called Quality Assurance Systems, Processes, Procedures, Regulations or Guidelines.

The last decade has witnessed several encouraging trends in the thinking of food safety.

First, it has become clear that the responsibility for food safety is not only up to the Government or the abattoir owner but evenly distributed along the entire food chain of production, and does not reside solely with the final consumer.

Secondly, new strategies have been adopted that engineer safety into food products, such as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), Good Manufacturing Practices and Good Agricultural Practices. Foodborne diseases remain an important challenge to public health, thus causing a major burden of illness and requiring substantial resources for their control and prevention.

New active surveillance strategies can provide better data on the burden of illness and can track trends in the incidence of specific diseases as prevention improvements such as HACCP systems are implemented. Although the principles of HACCP have been known for more than 20 years, within most food companies little was known on this subject. Furthermore, legal requirements for HACCP in Europe-EC Directive 93/43 (EEC, 1993) and USA (FDA, 1995) meant the principles of HACCP and training of HACCP skills had to be put in place in a relatively short period of time (De Winter, 1998). With the promulgation of the Regulations of the Meat Safety Act, Act 40 of 2000, the implementation of food safety systems such as Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) and Hygiene Management Systems (HMS) has now become a requirement in the abattoir industry.

Click here to view a video that explains the HACCP principles and understanding the food safety system.

Most of these systems or guidelines have been developed in such a manner that they can assist a practitioner to move through a procedure that can reduce the process variability or identify specific problems in the process. However, other methodologies may need to be developed to allow for sufficient customisation to a certain specific process. As a start, these tools can be utilized to ensure process maintenance and improvement. They include:

• Analysis
• Improvement
• Monitoring
• Implementation

Furthermore, it is important to note that the mere use of the quality control tools does not necessarily constitute a quality program. Thus, to achieve lasting improvements in quality, it is essential to establish a system that will continuously promote quality in all aspects of the value-adding operation. Principles of quality control include:

• Defining quality
• Quality control
• Measuring quality
• Analysing quality
• Methods to evaluate the quality
• New techniques for improving quality

These methods vary from rapid platform tests to more sophisticated and time-consuming analysing methods including, e.g., microbiological quality tests.

However, the scope and quality of quality control and methodology depend greatly on the size of the production unit, the volume of production and the product mix. Small processing systems, producing only one product, start with limited production capacity and must rely on less sophisticated quality control methods. However, the quality control methods used should be reliable and cover the most essential quality criteria like hygiene.

The quality control standards and methodology used should be under continuous evaluation and development according to increases in and diversification of production and improvement of processing methods.

There are hundreds of food safety hazards and prioritising them according to the type of product, process and end-use, an effective, practical and economical safety management system can be developed. When analysing the hazards, the risks can be assessed by determining severity, incidence and onset.