ABSTRACT
There has been much discussion about, and hence confusion over, the nomenclature regarding this function within food manufacturing. It was referred to first as quality control; this was then followed by quality assurance; then it became quality management; then total quality management, or TQM. Somewhere in between these terms there was product integrity, a term that I preferred. However, by quality control, I refer to that function in a company responsible for assuring that all processing, product, environmental, and worker safety standards are adhered to and that all reasonable and practicable precautions to protect the product from hazards of public health significance have been taken. I include sanitation, worker training, worker hygiene, pest control programs, observance of good manufacturing practices, and establishment and observance of hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) programs.
