Food needs to be safe before it can be considered to be a quality food. It can be safe but not a quality food. Safety is an integral component of food quality. Food safety involves ensuring a food that does not make most people ill. Usually ensuring a food is safe involves protecting a food from chemical, biological and physical contamination, or ensuring that any product harmful to the consumer such as a naturally occurring toxin that is normally destroyed during heating is actually destroyed. Pasteurised milk is not sterile; it can still contain viable micro-organisms at levels that would be harmless to most people. Food quality involves making sure the food is safe as well as making sure the product is attractive to the purchaser. A product may have an off flavour, unattractive mouthfeel or colour but be perfectly safe. A quality product, while needing to be safe, must meet other, often subjective, requirements.
