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What are the regulations governing food safety?

Food safety is essential to ensure the protection of consumer health. For this reason, the European Union has introduced a series of strict regulations aimed at controlling and regulating all stages of the food chain, from production to distribution, up to the sale of food products. These regulations are designed to ensure that food is safe, meets specific hygiene standards and is properly labeled, thereby protecting consumers from potential risks and ensuring transparency of information.

The main European food safety regulations include: 

 

• Regulation (EC) 178/2002, which entered into force on January 1, 2006. This regulation sets out the general principles and requirements for food law, including food traceability. Traceability is a mandatory requirement that all food business operators must be able to identify the origin of food and its final destination. This system allows any food to be tracked along the entire chain, facilitating the withdrawal of non-compliant products and preventing potential health risks. 
• Regulation (EC) 852/2004 on food hygiene, which is another key element of the European legislation, establishing general principles of hygiene that must be respected by all operators in the food sector. This regulation applies to every stage of food production, processing and distribution, requiring that all processes are carried out in accordance with high hygiene standards. Operators must take preventive measures to avoid contamination of food, ensuring that facilities, equipment and personnel comply with health standards. Article 5 of Regulation (EC) 852/2004 also requires food companies operators to implement a self-monitoring system based on the principles of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP). This system involves the identification and analysis of potential risks throughout the production chain and the definition of critical control points (CCP) where it is possible to prevent, eliminate or reduce risks to acceptable levels. The HACCP system is fundamental to ensure food safety, as it allows for continuous monitoring and control of production processes, ensuring that products placed on the market are safe for consumption.

As regards prepacked foods, Directive 1976/211/EEC, establishes the rules relating to the net weight indicated on the packaging. This regulation requires manufacturers to comply with strict tolerances on declared weight, which must be verified and certified by legal measuring instruments such as MID legalized checkweighers. The declared net weight must be clearly marked on the packaging with the symbol "℮", guaranteeing to consumers that the product complies with the indicated quantities.

 

Nemesis checkweighers - alone or combined with metal detectors or labelers - are essential tools to ensure compliance with food safety regulations and traceability. These devices, designed for dynamic weight control, are able to verify precisely that the declared net weight on prepackaged products actually corresponds to the actual amount of food present in the package. Thanks to their high accuracy and reliability, they allow discrepancies to be identified quickly, thus preventing the distribution of non-compliant products.