MANAGING FOOD SAFETY RISKS IN THE FOOD SYSTEM: POLICY OPTIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXTENSION

Food safety, public health, and environmental risk management issues related to agriculture have grown in prominence and controversy over the past decade. These issues are personal, local, national, even global, in scope. They raise many complex management and policy issues for government, agriculture, the food industries and the consum-ing public. Some recent examples illustrate the point. Recently, the U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture (USDA) issued a press advisory about eggs, warn-ing that they should not be consumed without thorough cooking. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has developed recommendations for food service establishments that largely counsel eliminating the use of raw eggs. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that at least forty-three persons died between 1985-1989 from disease caused by salmonella enteriditis with 75 percent attributed to eggs. An addi-tional 6,604 nonfatal cases of this foodborne disease were reported in that period. Of the sixty-five outbreaks of salmonellosis reported since February 1990, twenty-two were linked to eggs (Sugarman). How should this issue be managed at the policy level and what are the implications of alternative approaches? Should policies focus on changing consumer or food service cooking techniques (equivalent to "blaming the victim " in the eyes of some consumer advocates and restaurateurs), or on cleaning up chicken feeds, chicken production facilities, or processing practices? Each of the options implies different distributional sets of costs and benefits of overall cost-effectiveness. Another recent food safety issue is seafood inspection, championed by Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, a Washington, D.C., ad-vocacy group. Consumer groups have fought for mandatory inspection for the past four years. Action has stalled currently but many consumer groups believe an eventual congressional victory is likely. Whatever the ultimate bill, several significant risk management issues remain to be worked out in implementation including program scope; inspection priorities; allocation of resources between species, agencies, and loca