We discussed food safety with Chairman of Turkish Food Safety Association Mr. Samim Saner. We made a pleasing interview for our readers on upcoming developments in food sector in the coming years and on which particulars must be treated with sensitivity to ensure bigger advancements in the sector.
Mr. Samim Saner could you please tell us about yourself and your professional background?
Following receiving my Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD degrees from Istanbul Technical University, Vienna Technical University, and Bogazici University on Chemical Engineering,
Biochemistry, and Environmental Sciences and Food Hygiene diploma from the Royal Institute of Public Health, I took part in establishment of Kalite Sistem Laboratuvarları (KSL) and Turkey operations of S&Q Mart in 1991. I acted as the General Manager of Mérieux NutriSciences under Kalite Sistem Group until 2017.
As of January 2017, I became Scientific Director in charge of 25 countries at international operations department of Mérieux NutriSciences group. I am actively involved in several international professional organizations such as EHEDG, IAFP, and AOAC Europe.
At the same time, I have been the Chairman of Turkish Food Safety Association for 15 years and acting as a part time lecturer at Chemistry Department of Bogazici University.
Could you please inform our readers about Turkish Food Safety Association? How would you describe significance of the services you provide to Turkish food industry in terms of the sector and the country?
Turkish Food Safety Association was established in 2003 with an aim of collecting all stakeholders in food safety under an umbrella and creating a sectoral and societal awareness on this issue. In this scope we realized a number of activities directed towards consumers and the sector.
The most important one of such activities is International Food Safety Congress that we have been organizing since 2009. Right now, we have been working on preparations for the seventh congress which will be held at Grand Cevahir Hotel between June 4th and 5th, 2020.
The main purpose of this international congress is bringing together all occupational groups and various stakeholders related to food safety under the same roof to create a common mind and contribute to food safety applications in food industry by sharing scientific, technical, and legal innovations.
Consumers receive deceptive information regarding food safety from many resources. This misguides consumers, causing them to alter their priorities while negatively affecting development of organizations with good practices in our country. In this scope, we carry out a regular information campaign via print and social media.
At the same time and considering media must be encouraged to perform journalism based on proof and scientific truth, in May 2017 we started giving Food Safety Association Media Awards. Food related news is meticulously scanned on print media,
TV, the Internet, and news agency categories and after prescreening such news is evaluated by a 9-person jury composed of journalists and academics.
We have the opportunity to thank members of the press who base their news on scientific facts by giving 19 awards in 4 categories at awards ceremony where many esteemed journalists, academics, and representatives of the media and the scientific world participate.
Turkish Food Safety Magazine that has been active since 2007 covering food safety in all it is dimensions is the only journal in our country covering food safety as it is main topic.
With this mission in mind, we try to share news on food safety, scientific and technological developments, and facts with the media and public opinion as much as we can.
How would you describe food safety? What precautions must be taken to develop food safety concept?
“Food safety” is the scientific discipline ensuring food is produced while controlling for physical, chemical, and biological risks and in a way that would not endanger consumer health in all processes from field to fork. The most important principle of food safety is prevention, meaning problems must be prevented before they arise.
All food safety management systems starting from HACCP are based on this main principle. Another important principle is traceability. It is highly important to track a threat to human health to establish which stages and which supplier it sourced from.
For this reason, ensuring traceability is a legal obligation. No matter where in the chain you are, you must keep track of your place one step back and one step forward while ensuring the best control and supervisions.
State supervision of food safety with laws and official regulations together with official controls create the legal dimension of food safety system as main source of rules. However, one of the major roles in food safety belongs to customers.
Unless customers demand “safe food”, we can never reach anywhere. For this reason, creating and generalizing awareness on food safety in the public is of key importance.
What are your projects? Which factors do you take into account while deciding on projects?
We realized many projects and contributed to many other EU funded projects until now. Our most recent project as Food Safety Association is “Food Loss and Label Reading Research”.
We attach great importance to the issue of food loss since correct food safety applications and technologies can prevent food loss to a great extent. Our study is focused on food going to waste because of unconscious consumption habits, in other words, “food loss”.
Food loss is not only a problem causing high costs and loss of resources globally, it is predicted that with population increase it would reach even bigger dimensions. It is well known that 1/3 of all food produced globally goes to waste and value of such waste food reach an average of 1.3 trillion U.S. Dollars annually.
The rate of waste is expected to reach 40% by 2020. Findings indicate that 17% of waste in industrialized societies worldwide is sourced from supply chain while 5% from retail, 17% from collective consumption points such as restaurants or hotels, etc. while 61% source from houses.
According to these rates, the main reasons behind waste are consumer attitudes and behavior. In our research we aimed to shed light on general food shopping habits, food consumption at home and in restaurants and discarding food behaviors of consumers from different demographical groups in Turkey.
According to findings of our research, in line with our 3 main purposes we reached findings in 3 main groups as food shopping and label reading, dimensions of food waste, and customer approaches to ideas to reduce food loss.
Thanks to such findings we prepared strategies and action plans to determine the current level of food waste and customer awareness regarding waste and to prevent waste.
Presenting such information to use became the guiding force behind realizing actions directed towards cooperation between consumers, food suppliers/producers, and the ministry.
For instance, we are preparing a consumer guidebook that would create awareness about the difference expiration date and recommended expiration date in addition to food protection and conscious food consumption.
At the same time, we will prepare a guidebook for producers and organize comprehensive trainings on “shelf life and packaging”. I would like to underline that this research was granted Bronze Social Owl award by Turkish Researchers’ Association (TUAD).
What changes are awaiting us in food sector in the next years? What kind of an impact will such changes have on Turkey and the world?
Considering current consumption dynamics, it has been predicted that by 2050 the world population will increase by 29% and reach 9.8 billion from current 7.6 billion while demand for protein will increase by 78%. There will definitely be problems with protein supply. On the other hand, the number of vegans will certainly increase.
For this reason, it is predicted that husbandry will lose it is prominence especially in developed countries due to excessive water consumption, greenhouse gas emission, and consumer pressure, while innovative biotechnological resources such as insects, microalgae, herbal protein resources and cellular protein, and synthetic meat will be used as protein resources.
Another renovation that is becoming widespread in the U.S. and Europe concerns nutrition. Amazing developments regarding mapping human genome bring forward new perspectives first in health and now in nutrition.
Effect of diet on genes (nutrigenomics) together with proving how humans give different reactions to food based on their genetic structure (nutrigenetics) opened the door to the concept of personalized nutrition. Accordingly, importance of intestinal microbiota in personalized nutrition comes forward.
In the coming years, we will eat according to our genome and use our smart phones to learn what and how much to eat to prepare our nutrition plans. We can observe nutritive values of what we eat and deviations from our diet.
We will receive notifications to our phones. Another important renovation concerns transparency, traceability, and relevant innovative technologies. Globalization and fragmentation of supply chains lead to serious problems with food safety and deceptions become widespread.
Many consumers are unaware of the supplier of their food. This is a growing problem. New technologies will be used to present production and farming processes transparently from field to fork and ensure product traceability.
Another significant development is preparing metabolic fingerprints of products thanks to non-targeted analysis technologies (non-targeted screening) and achieving input controls for raw materials by a single test to measure food safety and food scams. Such innovations are fast approaching; we must be prepared for them.
What sensitivities the food sector must have in order to achieve faster progress?
One of the issues that food sector must be sensitive about is the global confidence crisis among consumers towards food products. The data I have is unfortunately from abroad. 77% of French, 55% of Americans, and 91% of Chinese believe that food they consume might be detrimental to their health.
I think data from our country would be around these figures as well. Parallel to this confidence crisis, consumers demand transparency about the products they consume. A number of food producers employ open doors policies and admit customers to their facilities.
I believe tours developed to this aim using virtual reality technology will become widespread. Another significant development to ensure reestablishment of customer confidence is increasing use of smart phone applications that present all details customers want to know about products.
Some producers develop smart phone applications whereby consumers can scan QR codes on product packages to see the entire supply chain, ingredients, nutrition values, and possible allergens of products through augmented reality applications.
It is well known that some chain stores in the U.S. and Europe use the blockchain technology to ensure traceability of products they sell.
Consumers can use the blockchain technology to see details of a chicken such as ingredients of it is food, the farm it was produced, the slaughterhouse it was slaughtered, and results from its analysis.
Apart from that, a basic problem in our country is existence of many production facilities at very different levels of food safety. While there are facilities that make production even over European standards, there are also a number of others making illicit and unregistered productions.
Thus, it is possible to find products at varying levels of food safety at the market. This seriously damages value of
Turkish products and Turkey brand not just at domestic market but at exports as well. If you take a look at successful examples of international brands in food sector, you can find high levels of food safety and quality at all of them. No product with confidence problems and quality instability has place in international markets.
For this reason, corporate investments on food safety and quality must be officially supported to achieve brand formation. Such supports would help product safety and quality to increate at local as well as international markets.
Many EU countries have effective official support programs in place to that aim. Another point that the sector must dwell upon is developing innovative products and innovative packaging materials based on changing customer expectations.
