The organisers of the IPA event, which will take place next November in Paris, asked 386 international food and drink industry professionals about the importance of food safety for their business.

Perhaps not surprisingly, all the respondents said it was of utmost importance to them to ensure that the food they made was safe to eat, but the survey did show a variety of approaches adopted by the industry to ensure food safety.

Responsibility

More than half the companies questioned (58.5 per cent) said that they had a specific individual within their organisation who was responsible for food safety.

But in cases where no specific post exists, it is almost always the responsibility of the top management - chairman or director general - to ensure that food hygiene standards are met.

This was the case for 17.5 per cent of those questioned, but that figure rises to 45.5 per cent for small and medium-sized companies with fewer than 20 employees.

Only five per cent of companies said that they had no one who took responsibility for food safety.

Contamination concerns

For most of those questioned (85 per cent), the main risk was microbial contamination such as bacteria, fungi or viruses.

Physical contamination was the second most-common risk, accounting for 77 per cent of the respondents, while chemical contamination was third with 62 per cent.

Most of the respondents also felt that there were factors over which they had little or no contol which could impact the safety of their products: for 85 per cent, contaminated raw materials were a major risk.

But other risks could be managed more effectively within the companies themselves: 79 per cent said staff and 73.5 per cent said machinery could be responsible for contaminating food, accidentally or otherwise, but that these were risks over which it was possible to exert some form of control.

Hygiene

Instilling good hygiene practices among staff, for example, was vital to keep the risk to a minimum - meaning that machinery and staff both needed to be washed regularly.

But few companies - less than a third - considered employing an independent firm to certify the quality of their hygiene processes, the study showed.

And 47 per cent of those questioned said that they did not require their suppliers to meet any specific hygiene standards, compared to just 27 per cent of firms that did.