Food Safety: Ultimate Guide

In the food industry, safety is essential. It starts with sourcing ingredients and goes all the way to packaging the final product. Food safety practices help protect consumers, avoid expensive recalls, and ensure compliance with regulations. In this guide we will outline the key principles, certifications, and tools that every food business needs to manage risks and build trust in the supply chain.

What Is Food Safety?

Food safety is how we handle, prepare, and store food to keep it safe from contamination and protect people's health. This includes practices on farms, food processing, packaging, transport, and labeling. Safety also means protecting against bacteria, heavy metals, pesticides, and other things that can harm people's health.

For food businesses, food safety is important for several reasons. It helps meet legal rules, satisfies buyers, and protects your brand. A mistake in food safety can lead to product recalls, loss of trust, and expensive problems in the supply chain. That's why food safety measures are part of almost every step of making and distributing food.

No matter if you are a manufacturer, importer, exporter, or ingredient supplier, knowing about food safety is key to keeping your products safe and building strong partnerships.

Food Safety Certifications

Certifications show that your business meets accepted food safety standards. They help build trust, show that you follow legal rules, and they can open doors to new markets or retailers. For many B2B food companies, having a company-level food safety certification is necessary to work with big buyers, especially in export and retail.

Read a more in-depth review of the different certifications in our article about Food Safety Certifications.

Global Food Safety Standards

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is a private group that sets food safety standards used around the world. They aim to make it easier to source food internationally by bringing different certification systems together. The most common standards include:

• BRCGS (Brand Reputation Compliance Global Standard)
• IFS (International Featured Standards)
• FSSC 22000 (Food Safety System Certification)
• SQF (Safe Quality Food)

Each standard has its strengths, but they all aim to ensure that food is consistently produced, handled, and stored in a way that minimizes risk. Check out our article "What is GFSI?" to learn more about the different certifications.

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Other Certifications

Certifications such as Organic, Kosher, Halal, and Fair Trade are important in food production and sales. They focus on ethical, religious, or environmental standards rather than safety from contamination or hygiene.

Even though they are not safety certifications, they are important to talk about because "safety" means more than just what people usually think. Misusing pesticides or banned substances is also a safety issue. Thus we briefly mention them in this guide.

• Organic: This label controls the use of pesticides, soil health, and GMOs, but it does not cover safety or allergens.
• Halal & Kosher: These labels specify how food should be sourced and prepared according to religious rules, but they do not replace safety checks.
• Fair Trade: This label guarantees fair wages and ethical sourcing. It can overlap with tracking food sources but does not address hygiene or hazard control.

To be fully compliant, these labels should also have a recognized food safety certification, like BRCGS or FSSC 22000.

HACCP

HACCP, or Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, is the backbone to food safety today. It asks food businesses to find risks at each step of making food and to put in place controls to avoid those risks. HACCP is often required by law, but it is also the foundation for many global certifications like BRCGS, IFS, and FSSC 22000. No matter if you are a small producer or part of a larger supply chain, HACCP helps you create a strong food safety plan based on managing risks.

Types of Food Safety Hazards

Within there are three main risk-categories:

• Biological: Bacteria (e.g. Salmonella, Listeria), viruses, parasites. These are the most common cause of foodborne illness and must be controlled through hygiene, temperature, and handling. In 2025 Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn had to recall blueberries due to Hepatitis A contamination.
• Chemical: Includes pesticide residues, cleaning agents, allergens, and food additives. These hazards can result from contamination or incorrect food labeling.
• Physical: Foreign objects like glass, metal, or plastic fragments that can cause injury or choking. These usually result from equipment failure or poor handling.

Food Safety Software & Tools

Using digital tools to manage food safety makes things more efficient and helps meet regulations. Software can track food batches, check temperatures, and generate audit reports automatically. It also helps with recalls and confirms supplier documents. Many systems work with ERP software and traceability software or tracing solutions for better oversight. For companies that are expanding, these digital tools are crucial to maintain food safety standards while keeping everything under control.

Food Safety Tips

Safety is more than just having rules; it involves daily habits, clear communication, and being prepared. Here are some key tips for any food business:

• Start with staff training. Ensure everyone knows hygiene rules, how to handle allergens, and your safety procedures. This is important when new employees start and when rules change.
• Keep supplier documents current. Know where your ingredients come from, and check high-risk suppliers regularly to catch any issues early. Make sure that specifications are up-to-date.
• Use digital recordkeeping when you can. Having neat, easy-to-access logs for temperatures, traceability, and cleaning schedules will save time during audits and make recalls faster if needed.
• Physically separate high-risk areas in your facility. This means having different spaces for raw and cooked foods, allergen-specific ingredients, or products with different hygiene levels.

Lastly, be proactive. Don’t wait for an audit to find problems. Schedule your own checks often and fix issues before they grow.

These simple practices create a food safety culture that protects your products, customers, and brand.