Better food safety can help reduce wastage, study finds

Dubai - Study showed food wastage proportion was the highest among meat processing units, followed by dairy manufacturing and flour and pasta industries.

Safe food management practices at Dubai's manufacturing companies can reduce food wastage, a study conducted by a Dubai Municipality employee has found.
While most studies on food wastage here talk about lavish display and surplus serving of food at buffets and ceremonies, Hossamedlin Mohamed Abdelwahab Ahmed, a food safety inspector with the municipality, chose to study the impact of food safety management system on food waste generation.
His study results were presented at the poster section of the 10th Dubai International Food Safety Conference that was held last week.
"It is estimated that one-third to half of landfill waste comes from the food sector ... When I worked for the food consignment disposal section, I used to witness so many containers coming every day for destruction due to label issues and unfit samples," Ahmed told Khaleej Times.
As a food safety professional, he was pained to see the destruction of resources, money, effort and environment and the challenges posed to food security.
"I felt if better food safety practices were implemented, maybe they could have reduced food loss ... So, I chose this topic for my study as part of my master's degree."
Ahmed said the study was conducted by surveying about 10 per cent of over 220 food manufacturing units in Dubai.
The units were chosen from dairy, meat, flour and pasta and seafood manufacturing sectors.
Questionnaires were distributed, and side observations and interviews of hygiene managers and PICs (persons-in-charge of food safety) were done to anaylse the relation between food safety practices and wastage. All the units had applied the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system, but the level of efficiency in management differed.
"The result indicated that the food waste is very much related to the food safety condition in the manufacturing units. When they applied good food safety standards, automatically their food waste reduced."
Reasons for food loss varied between spoilage factors and contamination, temperature abuse, pest infestation, poor storage practices, stock rotation issues, expiry of items and rejection by authorised bodies due to food safety issues and labeling errors.
"Sometimes failures during processing and pest infestation created huge waste in flour and pasta making units ... It was also noted that room temperature at food receiving areas also caused food spoilage in the dairy products."
However, the study showed food wastage proportion was the highest among meat processing units, followed by dairy manufacturing and flour and pasta industries. The seafood manufacturing units generated the lowest amount of waste.
The study found food waste ratio decreased from 2011 to 2014 due to improvement in the application of food safety programmes, establishing that enhancing food safety plays a big role in protecting food and environment resources by reducing food waste or loss.
Symposium calls for solutions
The conference also had an International Union of Food Science and Technology symposium on addressing global food waste and food losses, which amount to 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year.
The symposium observed that food losses occur mainly in developing nations at and immediately after the farm level, whereas developed nations are wasting their food supply mainly at the post-processing level, with a major part occurring at home preparation and consumption level.
Therefore, speakers said, different strategies for sustainable solutions are required.
Besides technological support and processing solutions, they called for intensive consumer information and training activities.
sajila@khaleejtimes.com

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