Toward Safer Food Perspectives on Risk and Priority Setting

An integrated, risk-based food safety system is the essential scientific basis for better priority setting. However, there has been little advance about how to integrate knowledge about food safety risks into a system-wide risk analysis framework. This book begins to answer this need by bringing together leading scientists, risk analysts, and economists, as well as experienced regulators and policy analysts.
Toward Safer Food includes a multi-disciplinary introduction to the existing data, research, and methodological and conceptual approaches on which a system-wide risk analysis framework must draw. It also recognizes that efforts to improve food safety will be influenced by institutional contexts. Intended to be accessible to people from a wide variety of backgrounds, the book retains the conceptual sophistication needed to understand the challenges that are inherent in improving food safety.

In 1998, a National Academy of Sciences panel called for an integrated, risk-based food safety system. This goal is widely embraced, but there has been little advance in thinking about how to integrate knowledge about food safety risks into a system- wide risk analysis framework. Such a framework is the essential scientific basis for better priority setting and resource allocation to improve food safety. Sandra Hoffmann and Michael Taylor bring together leading scientists, risk analysts, and economists, as well as experienced regulators and policy analysts, to better define the priority setting problem and focus on the scientific and intellectual resources available to construct a risk analysis framework for improving food safety. Toward Safer Food provides a common starting point for discussions about how to construct this framework. The book includes a multi-disciplinary introduction to the existing data, research, and methodological and conceptual approaches on which a system-wide risk analysis framework must draw. It also recognizes that efforts to improve food safety will be influenced by the current institutional context, and provides an overview of the ways in which food safety law and administration affect priority setting. Hoffman and Taylor intend their book to be accessible to people from a wide variety of backgrounds. At the same time, they retain the core conceptual sophistication needed to understand the challenges that are inherent in improving food safety. The editors hope that this book will help the U.S. move beyond a call for an integrated, risk-based system toward its actual construction.

Preface Contributors PART I Framing the Design Problem 1. Getting to Risk-Based Food Safety Regulatory Management: Lessons from Federal Environmental Policy Sandra A. Hoffmann 2. The Centennial of U.S. Food Safety Law: A Legal and Administrative History Richard A. Merrill PART II Risks and Resources to Reduce Them 3. Linking Illnesses to Foods: A Conceptual Framework Robert V. Tauxe 4. Where Are Potential Chemical Hazards in the U.S. Food Supply? Penelope A. Fenner-Crisp 5. The Current State of Play: Federal and State Expenditures on Food Safety Lawrence J. Dyckman 6. Industry Costs to Make Food Safe: Now and under a Risk-Based System Laurian J. Unnevehr and Helen H. Jensen 7. The Value to Consumers of Reducing Foodborne Risks Elise Golan, Jean Buzby, Stephen Crutchfield, Paul D. Frenzen, Fred Kuchler, Katherine Ralston, and Tanya Roberts PART III Tools for Risk-Based Assessment of Food Safety Policy Priorities 8. New Developments in Chemical and Microbial Risk Assessment Robert Buchanan and Bart Suhre 9. Best Things First: Rethinking Priority Setting for Food Safety Policy Peter Nelson and Alan J. Krupnick 10. Judgment-Based Risk Ranking for Food Safety Michael L. DeKay, Paul S. Fischbeck, H. Keith Florig, M. Granger Morgan, Kara M. Morgan, Baruch Fischhoff, and Karen E. Jenni 11. Quality-Adjusted Life Years: Application to Food Safety Priority Setting Milton C.Weinstein 12. Willingness-to-Pay Measures of Food Safety Regulatory Benefits James K. Hammitt PART IV Identifying Lessons 13. Opportunities for Risk Reduction: A Public Health Perspective J. Glenn Morris, Jr. 14. Opportunities for Risk Reduction: An Economist‘s Perspective Julie A. Caswell 15. Toward an Integrated, Risk-Based Food Safety System: Constructing the Analytical Tools Michael R. Taylor Appendix: Responsibilities of Federal Agencies Involved with Food Safety Index

Sandra Hoffman is a fellow at Resources for the Future. Prior to joining RFF, Hoffmann was on faculty at the LaFollotte Institute of Public Policy at the University of Wisconsin. Michael R. Taylor is a senior fellow at Resources for the Future and chairs the steering committee of the Food Safety Research Consortium. He served in government as Administrator of the U.S.D.A. Food Safety and Inspection Service and as Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.