Food safety and quality assurance for cooked prawns: development and evaluation of a framework for the validation of a supply chain approach

Funded Activity Summary

International

Developments in the global trade of food have exposed primary producers to a new set of opportunities and risks that are best managed with risk assessment. Estimating ‘equivalence’ is now the process used to determine whether or not Australian products can penetrate foreign markets, and whether or not products produced abroad can penetrate Australian markets. This involves an appraisal of whether the imported product presents the same or lesser magnitude of human-health risk as posed by the domestic product. Under the guidelines produced by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the assessment of equivalence demands the conduct of a food safety risk assessment by the importing country. A country can deny the entry of a product if it fails to meet the equivalence standard. Thus exporting nations require a pool of scientific expertise to conduct their own risk assessments and also to appraise the appropriateness of those produced by their trading partners.

National

At the domestic level, state food safety legislation and food standards are increasingly based on the risk assessment approach. It is timely, therefore, for industry to (develop and) validate an integrated supply chain approach to food safety that has international standing as a basis for meeting public health and trade access requirements.

This project will provide an objective, transparent and scientifically robust basis for the management of food borne hazards and shelf life in the prawn industry. We propose to conform to the internationally accepted approach for the conduct of food safety risk assessment that is promulgated by CODEX, FAO and WHO (Anon., 2002).

Industry

This is an opportunity to work at all levels of the supply chain to ensure the safe reputation that SGWCPFA prawns enjoy is confirmed and maintained by validated quality systems. While the project develops and pre-tests a framework to validate the production of cooked prawns produced under the APPA Code it will provide industry with applied recommendations on the value of routine microbiological monitoring to support other audit verification processes.

Objectives:
1. Develop an approach designed to validate the APPA Code of Practice across the supply chain for cooked prawns as a model for crustacean industries
2. Benchmark industry performance criterion (i.e. quantify decrease/increase of indicator organisms) for cooking, freezing and preparation for retail (thawing, retail hygiene) processes
3. Benchmark industry product criteria (i.e. levels of food safety and shelf life microorganisms) across the supply chain to evaluate conformity with the ANZFA Food Standards Code.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 28-02-2003

End Date: 29-02-2004

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $29,724.00

Funder: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

There are no FoR codes available for this funding activity

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Analytics | Disease | Food processing | Food Safety | Food technology | Processing & packaging | Safety | Supply Chain

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