Handbook of Organic Food Safety and Quality provides comprehensive coverage of the latest research in the production and consumption of organic food and produce.

Features:

• improving the safety, quality and health benefits of organic foods
• discusses the latest research findings in this area
• focuses on assuring quality and safety throughout the food chain
• quality assurance strategies are reviewed relating to specific organic food sectors

Part 1 provides an introduction to basic quality and safety with chapters on factors affecting the nutritional quality of foods, quality assurance and consumer expectations.

Part 2 discusses the primary quality and safety issues related to the production of organic livestock foods including the effects of feeding regimes and husbandry on dairy products, poultry and pork. Further chapters discuss methods to control and reduce infections and parasites in livestock.

Part 3 covers the main quality and safety issues concerning the production of organic crop foods, such as agronomic methods used in crop production and their effects on nutritional and sensory quality, as well as their potential health impacts.

Part 4 focuses on assuring quality and safety throughout the food chain. Post-harvest strategies to reduce contamination of food and produce are addressed, as well as ethical issues such as fair trade products. The final chapters conclude by reviewing quality assurance strategies relating to specific organic food sectors.

Contents

Part 1: Organic Food Safety and Quality: Introduction and Overview

History and concepts of food quality and safety in organic food production and processing

• History of different food concepts of organic farming
• Where are modern organic food and farming concepts heading?

Nutritional quality of foods

• Methods for determining changes in nutritional quality

Quality assurance, inspection and certification of organic foods

• Introduction to quality assurance in organic foods
• The regulation
• Responsibilities
• Quality assurance
• Private, additional certifications
• Quality assurance to ensure quality and safety of organic and ‘low input’ foods
• Risk assessment in organic quality assurance
• Outlook

A new food quality concept based on life processes

• Description of the inner quality concept
• Method for validation of the inner quality concept
• Experiments to validate the IQC
• Progress made in the validation of the concept
• Perspective for farmers, traders and consumers

Food consumers and organic agriculture

• The expanding organic market: consumer-led producer driven?
• Factors influencing organic purchase
• The price premium

Part 2: Organic Livestock Foods

Effects of organic and conventional feeding regimes and husbandry methods on the quality of milk and dairy products

• quality parameters in dairy products
• Factors affecting the nutritional quality of liquid milk and milk products
• Procedures for implementing methods to improve the nutritional quality of milk products

Effects of organic husbandry methods and feeding regimes on poultry quality

• Sensory and nutritional quality
• Animal welfare related quality parameters
• Poultry health management and risk from food borne diseases
• Veterinary medicine use and residues
• Toxic chemicals and heavy metals
• Maintaining quality during processing
• Alternative assessment systems for organic food quality

Effect of organic, husbandry and feeding regimes on pork quality

• Perception of quality
• Framework conditions of pig production
• Consumer perception
• Product quality
• Animal welfare
• Environmental impacts
• Constraints and potentials for quality production

Organic livestock husbandry methods and the microbiological safety of ruminant

• Effect of forage to concentrate ratios on enteric pathogen prevalence and shedding
• Effect of livestock breed and husbandry (including veterinary antibiotic treatments) on the incidence of pathogens and antibiotic resistant bacteria
• Effect of stress on enteric pathogen shedding
• Reducing enteric pathogen transfer risks in organic and ‘low input’ systems: outline of strategies

Reducing antibiotic use for mastitis treatment in organic dairy production systems

• Causes and epidemiology of mastitis
• Symptoms of mastitis
• Mastitis management and treatment
• Husbandry and environmental improvement
• Breeding strategies
• Integration of management and treatment approaches; farm specific mastitis management plans

Reducing anthelmintic use for the control of internal parasites in organic livestock systems

• Ruminants
• Non-ruminants

Alternative therapies to reduce enteric bacterial infections and improve the microbiological safety of pig and poultry production systems

• Intestinal bacteria and their potential as probiotics
• Probiotics for farm animals
• Prebiotics for farm animals
• Synbiotics
• Acid activated antimicrobials (AAA)

Part 3: Organic Crop Foods

Dietary exposure to pesticides from organic and conventional food production

• Dietary exposure data sources
• Organic food and pesticide residues
• Reducing exposure to the OP insecticides

Levels of potential health impacts of nutritionally relevant phytochemicals in organic and conventional food production systems

• Plants as sources of phytochemicals
• assessment and bioavailability of phytochemicals
• Potential positive and negative effects of phytochemicals on livestock and human health
• Impact of phytochemicals on crop resistance to pests and diseases
• Factors that modulate differences in phytochemical levels and other major constituents between organic and conventional farming
• Gaps in knowledge – future research evaluations

Improving the quality and shelf-life of fruit from organic production systems

• Reasons for varying fruit quality: interactions between site conditions and management factors
• Comparison of quality parameters between organic and conventional fruit

Strategies to reduce mycotoxins and fungal alkaloid contamination in organic and conventional production systems

• Mycotoxin and alkaloid producing fungi
• Problems associated with dietary mycotoxins/alkaloid intake in livestock and humans
• Mycotoxin regulation and monitoring
• Factors affecting mycotoxins/alkaloid contamination of cereal grains
• Agronomic strategies to reduce mycotoxins grain infection and mycotoxins levels
• Effect of harvest conditions and post harvest handling on mycotoxins contamination levels
• Do organic and ‘low input systems’ present a particular risk for mycotoxins contamination?

Reducing copper-based fungicide use in organic crop production systems

• Effects of diseases on crop yield and quality in organic systems
• Crop protection with copper based fungicides in organic production systems
• Crop protection without copper-based fungicides

Pre-harvest strategies to ensure the microbiolgical safety of fruit and vegetables from manure-based production systems

• Use of manure in organic ‘low input’ and conventional farming
• Risk of transfer of enteric pathogens from manure to fruit and vegetable crops
• Agronomic strategies to minimize pathogen transfer risk
• Strategies for reducing pathogen loads in manure through manure processing
• Strategies used to reduce enteric pathogen contamination of crops via irrigation water
• Strategies to reduce risk of pathogen transfer from animal grazing phases prior to planting
• Other sources of enteric pathogen contamination
• Strategies used to reduce enteric pathogen contamination of crops via wild animal vectors
• HACCP based systems for integrated control of pathogen transfer into organic food supply chains

Part 4: The Organic Food Chain: processing, Trading and Quality Assurance

Post-harvest strategies to reduce enteric bacteria contamination of vegetable, nut and fruit products

• Processing strategies used
• Differences in organic and conventional processing standards
• Disadvantages of chlorine sanitation methods
• Methods used to study the efficacy of disinfection methods - Alternative strategies to the use of chlorine for disinfection
• Integration of strategies to minimise pathogen transfer risk during processing into organic and ‘low input’ standard systems

Fair trade: a basis for adequate producers’ incomes, farm reinvestment and quality and safety focussed production

• Organic market
• Ethical (fair) trade
• The view of the stakeholders and the key supply chain members

Development of quality assurance protocols to prevent GM-contamination of organic crops

• Terminology
• Examples of transgene escape
• Implications of transgene escape
• Mechanisms of transgene escape
• Managing coexistence
• Coexistence legislation
• GM free regions

Integration of quality parameters into food safety focused HACCP systems

• The need for integration and focusing of control systems for quality and safety
• Hazard analysis by critical control points
• Introducing the Organic HACCP project
• Benefits and drawbacks of using critical control point based systems at the level of a supply chain
• Concerns about social and ethical values among consumers of organic food
• Providing assurance that consumer concerns are met
• How identification of quality focused critical control points in organic food production chains was carried out in the organic HACCP project
• Examples of identified critical control points
• The organisational and educational requirements for utilising this concept in real supply chains
• Example of successful integration of the HACCP concept in a vegetable supply chain to control product quality as well as safety

Index

click here to see books of related interest