Food security and food safety issues of the long-term storage of meat and milk products

Abstract

The state when all people at any time have physical and economic access to safe and wholesome food sufficient to satisfy their physiological needs and benefits necessary for an active and healthy lifestyle is denominated as food security its principal components being: availability as the degree of actual or potential affordability of food in a certain group of the population during a certain period; accessibility, as the degree of the population’s ability to receive food at its disposal during a certain period of time; consumption, as the ability of the population to provide enough nutritious food for a certain period of time. The concept of food security, along with economic aspects, incorporates a number of technical components: alimentary and nutritional value of food, other physical and chemical characteristics, suitability for transportation and short-term and long-term storage. The technical regulation is the legal regulation of relations in the field of determining and fulfilling mandatory requirements for product characteristics or related processes and production methods. The principal directions for taking into account food security requirements in technical regulation are rational consumption norms, state food resources, food safety and certain indicators of their quality. Principal directions of implying food security fundamentals in the frames of technical regulation and standardization are specified as well as the algorithm of expedient involvement of the basics of food safety in regulatory norms. The consideration of the principles of food security in technical regulation can be fulfilled by developing normative documents that contain norms concerning long-term storage, amending existing regulatory documents, the scope of which are certain foods, with relevant sections as well as the development of documents that will normalize, if necessary, special methods for research of long-term storage products, such as butter and frozen meats. It is stated that specialized refrigerators and storage facilities, can carry out long-term storage of butter and meats for periods exceeding those specified in the national standards. It is possible to develop standards defining the terms and conditions of long-term storage of foods in the conditions of enterprises of the state reserve system. Another possible solution to the existing problem is the introduction of provisions regarding special requirements for long-term storage of foods in the state reserve, these involved in solving the issues of the food security, to the norms in force. Key words: food security, long-term storage, food safety, standards, butter, frozen meat, technical regulation.