We all know that no food is 100% safe and that preventing foodborne disease is a shared responsibility of everyone along the supply chain, but how does this translate on a day‐to‐day basis? In June 2012, over fifty policy makers and practitioners representing a range of disciplines, sectors and interests contributed to a productive dialogue on responsibility surrounding food safety. The following summary captures key concepts that emerged from the dialogue.
|Making sure that all parties farm-to-fork share the responsibility for food safety;|
|Complexity of the problem – including distance between producers and consumers, lack of information base, ability to make free choices vs. regulation;|
|Complexity of the food web: different stakeholders, different ingredients, different sources of food;|
|Economic issues: decreasing funding, budget allocation problems for food inspection;|
|The rules that are imposed are interpreted by agencies and organizations in different manners;|
|Different expectations of what food safety really means;|
|Individualism in America’s culture and access to/consumption of lots of food;|
|We have lost the concept of ‘unsafe food’. We don’t see frequent sickness related to food consumption so when such illness occurs, we want to blame someone;|
|We lack a clear idea of who is responsible for financing the different responsibilities for making food safe;|
|A “No tolerance” mentality may result in inequitable treatment of processors: all levels of processors contribute to the food network, but there’s a feeling that small producers may not bear equal responsibility;|
|Cultural differences in all aspects of food preferences, preparation approaches, regulatory systems make unified approaches impractical.|
|Global vs. Local||Potential for threat vs. real threat|
|Education vs. Regulation||Cooperation vs. competition|
|Transparency vs. Confidentiality||Zero tolerance vs. inability to prove a negative|
|Public good vs. Private good||Information vs. inflammation|
|Personal choice vs. government restrictions||Food safety vs. food security|
Polarity mapping was used to tease apart the paradoxes. The entire group started by reaching consensus on:
What we all most want:
Access for everyone to a sufficient supply of safe, nutritious, affordable and tasty food produced through sustainable systems
What we all most fear or seek to avoid:
Personal/family tragedy from food-borne illness, starvation, loss of choice, unaffordable food, lack of evidence-based policy, animal cruelty or death of the planet
|Facilitate regular goal-oriented meetings between consumers, consumer advocates and regulators|
|Initiate a food safety Public Service campaign aimed at producers and consumers|
|Promote the development of many small, diversified farms to enhance resilience|
|Establish education programs for consumers|
|Reduce food waste|
“let’s focus on the common goal of safe food”
Jeff’s mother died of salmonella as a result of contaminated peanut butter. Trying to make sense of her death, Jeff started studying food safety. What he found were old laws and confusing regulations with some food companies inspected only once every 10 years. He got involved with the campaign to enact the Food Safety Modernization Action and was surprised at the politics involved. Sharing information and doing the right thing would go a long way to improving food safety.
“wholesome nutritious food starts with us!”
Dana is a 3rd generation dairy farmer. They take food safety seriously with a goal to produce high quality, safe food through environmentally sound farming creating an economically stable situation for the family and employees. Safe, quality milk starts with comfortable, healthy cows. Dairy farming is highly regulated by a number of government agencies plus the farm implements several checkpoints to assure safe milk. After all, it takes less than 2 days for the milk to go from our farm to your grocery store.
“Schwans has zero tolerance for foodborne illness”
Schwans is a large and complex food company receiving ingredients from around the world and producing a wide variety of food. Food is sacred at Schwans and they’ve adopted a spirit of continuous improvement because food safety is a moving target with food products, consumer preferences and behavior changing constantly. The company implements a number of different procedures to ensure food safety with the belief that industry has the primary responsibility for food safety.
“Government Agencies have police power but not God powers; they can’t monitor and inspect everything”
Government has three roles: to regulate the conditions necessary to produce safe food, to investigate outbreaks and to intervene promptly to prevent further illness. Government has a limited number of regulatory inspectors so they try to monitor control measures rather than inspect every piece of finished food. While investigations of outbreaks are reactive, they also can provide important information to transform processes in order to make food safer.
Nearly 75%of the evaluation respondents felt better able to address the complexities of ‘Ensuring Food Safety’ to help arrive at solutions. Over half of the respondents stated the course fostered new connections and/or established new relationships with others.