Protecting our vulnerable food supply

From farmyard to dinner table, our food supply presents ample opportunity for dangerous microorganisms or their products to thrive and infect or intoxicate human beings, often with harmful and sometimes fatal results. Traditional controls to protect the food supply include, but are not limited to, l...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of law, medicine & ethics medicine & ethics, 2002-09, Vol.30 (3 Suppl), p.96
Main Authors: Pestronk, Robert M, Lindsay, Ward, Fortin, Neal, Kearney, Brendon, Eadie, Robert E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Australia
Comparative analysis
Disease Outbreaks - prevention & control
Food
Food Contamination - legislation & jurisprudence
Food Contamination - prevention & control
Food Industry - legislation & jurisprudence
Food safety
Food supply
Food Supply - legislation & jurisprudence
Food Supply - standards
Food, Organic
Government Agencies
Humans
Leadership
Legislation, Food
New Zealand
Protection and preservation
Public health
Public health administration
Public Health Administration - legislation & jurisprudence
Public Policy
Regulation
Safety and security measures
United States
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Summary:From farmyard to dinner table, our food supply presents ample opportunity for dangerous microorganisms or their products to thrive and infect or intoxicate human beings, often with harmful and sometimes fatal results. Traditional controls to protect the food supply include, but are not limited to, law and regulation. But law and regulation are only enablers, an underpinning. Most important to protection of the food supply is organizational leadership and commitment at federal, state, and local levels of government to protect the public's health. This article provides examples of such leadership in locales as diverse as Australia, New Zealand, and Genesee County, Michigan. Even when a supportive law is in place and the will and resources to make the law work exist, competing political and economic world-views are constantly at work to amend the law and thus adversely affect the public's health.
ISSN:1073-1105
1748-720X