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Agriculture in the food supply chain: an overview Key Topics in Food Science & Technology No. 5 (2002) |
 
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Gain a broad overview of how agricultural production and handling practices fit into the modern food supply chain and play a major role in assuring food safety and quality. Material flows along the food production chain from the primary producer - farmer or grower - to the consumer, usually through intermediaries such as processors, manufacturers, ingredients suppliers, marketing organisations, wholesalers and retailers. This supply chain is rapidly becoming more closely integrated with greater emphasis on quality management, safety assurance and traceability, and with primary producers working as part of the chain to meet the needs of consumers in a dynamic marketplace Published jointly with the Royal Agricultural Society of England, this short book was written to help encourage better mutual understanding between 'agricultural' and 'food' enterprises. It describes what agriculture is, provides examples of production practices, illustrates why some safety issues have to be tackled at the agricultural stage, and discusses product quality in terms of both raw material performance and wider issues such as care of the environment and animal welfare. It highlights the trends towards quality assurance and traceability, outlines the roles of legislation and self-regulation, and provides definitions of agricultural terms with which food professionals should be familiar. As a brief introduction, rather than an in-depth review, it provides a lead-in to other more extensive existing information sources.
120 pages - soft cover The Key Topics in Food Science & Technology series has been developed to meet a need within industry, education and enforcement bodies for industrially relevant introductory guides to specific aspects of food science and technology. Click here to view sample pages. |