Agreed.
Its application perhaps pushes the boundaries.
For example if a regulatory body establishes “food safety” limits, they tend to be permissive up to the point of known harm, not a guide to wholesome or healthy food, and that is perhaps a reasonable definition of “food safety” guidelines.
Their goals are not so much to ensure that food is safe, for which we could easily just stick to natural, unprocessed foods, but rather to ensure that most known serious harms are avoided.
Surely it is a grey area at best, since many additives may be in general somewhat deleterious but offer benefits in reducing harmful contamination and aiding shelf life, which actually may introduce more positive outcomes than the negative offset.
The internal application of said guidelines by a food manufacturer, however, may very well be incentivized primarily by the avoidance of brand risk, rather than the actual safety or beneficial nature of their products.
So I suppose it depends on if we are talking about the concept in a vacuum or the concept in application. I’d say in application, brand risk is a serious contender for primary motive. However I’m sure that varies by company and individual managers.
But yeah, the term is unambiguous. Words have meanings, and we should respect them if we are to preserve the commons of accurate and concise communication.
Nuance and connotation are not definitions.