Gastrointestinal tract

Digestion’s long corridor runs from mouth to anus, and that whole organ is the gastrointestinal tract. Food enters here, is broken down in the stomach and intestines, and yields its nutrients and non-nutrient components to absorption into the body, while the remainder leaves as waste. Every food safety control ultimately serves this system: pathogens that survive processing meet their opportunity in the gut, and nutrients that processing preserves are absorbed along its length. Its health depends on diet, microbes and the absence of chemical or physical hazards in what we eat.