A keynote lecture at the 2nd Global Feed & Food Congress, which takes place in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on 16th-18th April 2007, will insist that the responsibility for ensuring food safety is going to switch from official inspections of final products back to the players in the production chain. Addressing the subject of ‘Biosafety in livestock production to ensure food safety,’ Professor Thomas Blaha from the University of Hannover’s faculty of veterinary medicine in Germany will say that traditional food safety measures based on inspecting at slaughter are no longer sufficient. Professor Blaha, who is also current president of the International Society for Animal Hygiene, believes the involvement of the complete chain of production is vital to assure a safe food supply and restore the trust of the consumer in the safety of modern food production systems.

“Instead of a final product being declared by state-employed inspectors as fit for human consumption, the major tool in guaranteeing food safety will be a producer-driven optimization of the production procedures from the feed forwards,” said Professor Blaha, speaking exclusively to Feed International. “The more that producers take over their responsibility for guaranteeing the production procedures necessary for producing safe food, the less official inspection of final products will be needed before their consumption.”