Importance of Organic Farming in Terms of Food Safety – Featured Article by Agriculture Guide

Food safety is defined as taking precautions and complying with necessary rules during production, processing, storage and delivering stage of food in order to provide healthy and precise food production.

Sufficient food supply or food safety has been a strategic issue in history of humankind. In view of rapidly increasing world population, environmental pollution has become a serious threat for human health as a result of the use of developing technology and of policies providing for the intensive input use for the supply of food necessities.

In addition to these developments, economic troubles and inadequate education in less developed and developing countries have increased the feeding problem of rapidly increasing population; made it hard to supply food; increasedthe number of the establishments producing unhealthy and low quality food; and allowed them to make unfair competition with the ones producing safe food. As a result, health of the society, food industry and the production of high  quality and safe food have been affected negatively.

Production of healthy and high quality raw material

Production of healthy and high quality raw material should be seen as a prerequisite for food safety. Safe food should be produced in establishments under minimum health, hygiene and technical conditions.

Physical, biologic and chemical dangers have great importance for food safety. Physical dangers are all kinds of foreign materials (stone,sand,metal,wood,etc.) which are not desired to be included within the food. They affect the demand of consumers and cause health problems. Bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites are serious biologic dangers regarding food safety. Chemical dangers for food can be listed as natural toxic materials (mytotoxins and sea oriented toxins), environment oriented toxins (ex. Hg, Pb, Cadmium, dioxins) and chemicals naturally found in plants (ex. Glycoalkaloids in potato).

In order not to pollute the environment, it is quite important for food safety and environmental hygiene to control and send away the wastes and residues that occur during food production.

In order to increase the production supply for the increasing population in the world, transgenic products are produced by means of modern biotechnology. Different from the other crops grown on nature, transgenic crops have genes which do not belong to their own varieties, raise significant doubts and create risks for animal and human health, for food safety, for biologic diversity and for environmental and socio-economic structure.

Monitor all stages from production to table

The concept of food safety is evaluated with the criteria of “food safety from field to table” in developed coutries. With this in mind, main principles of this criterion, animal health (preventation and control of animal diseases, animal welfare), plant health (pesticide safety), safety of animal feeds, safety of food products and labeling of food are under the control of central authorized food safety authority. In food safety chain, it is important to monitor all stages from production to table.

In every part of the world, especially in EU countries and in other developed countries, the people are more conscious of environment and of the products on market. Consumers prefer safer, healthy and environment friendly food.

Marketing the products whose genetic structure is modified, as a result of dioxin problem that appeared in Europe recently has increased the demand of conscious consumers for organic products whose all production stages are under control and which are away from such concerns. These developments have been effective in the consumption of organic products by environmentalist groups and the people caring their own health.

Organic farming includes production systems which are friendly to environment and livings and which aim to reestablish the natural balance lost as a result of misapplications. To this end, organic farming has been developed as an alternative production system whose all production stages from production to consumption are under control and registered, and which aims for the protection of soil and water resources in all kinds of growing techniques and inputs which are used beginning from the preparation of seedbed.

How to get maximum yield per unit area ?

In development targets where the balance between human and nature is in the forefront, it is aimed to secure sustainability in agriculture avoiding from the factors polluting soil, air and water in agricultural activities. The main aim in organic farming is to get maximum yield per unit area by protecting the productivity of soil and water resources providing the continuity for nature.

Although agriculture is done under organic production conditions in many regions of some countries, the products are not marketed as organic products because the agriculture is not included within control and certification system. Some countries are very advantageous as per organic farming because of its proper ecology and unpolluted natural resources such as soil and water.

Control and certification are among the most important stages of organic farming. In order to introduce the products to domestic and foreign markets as organic products, they sould have an organic product certificate. Certification system is a guarantee for the production, processing and packaging of products as per organic standards. Besides providing reliability for consumers, the system protects the producers and firms against unfair competition.

By means of regulations related with organic farming activities, maximum food safety is provided by disciplining all shareholders inside this system. Moreover, the logos on organic products increase the confidence of consumers for these products.

The increase in organic farming export as a result of the validity of the Organic Farming Law and harmonization with the provisions of current legislation with the European Union directives numbered 2092/91 is an indicator of the confidence of importer countries in the organic products of our country.

Dangerous Weapon Jeopardizing

Because of the commercial concerns and danger of hunger of the rapidply increasing world population in the future, unconscious use of developments in scientific technology, mechanization and industry without taking sufficient precautions for the production of environment and current resources has become a dangerous weapon jeopardizing the human life by damaging the existing critical balances of the world.

So, the aim of organic farming is to introduce and market safe food not threatening the human health by damaging the natural sources and polluting the environment by stopping the harmful pace of humankind.

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