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Safe Food

Name: Safe Food
Author: Marion Nestle
ISBN: 9780520242234

by Marion Nestle

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Overview

Food safety is a matter of intense public concern, and for good reason. Millions of annual cases of food "poisonings" raise alarm not only about the food served in restaurants and fast-food outlets but also about foods bought in supermarkets. The introduction of genetically modified foods--immediately dubbed "Frankenfoods"--only adds to the general sense of unease. Finally, the events of September 11, 2001, heightened fears by exposing the vulnerability of food and water supplies to attacks by bioterrorists. How concerned should we be about such problems? Who is responsible for preventing them? Who benefits from ignoring them? Who decides?
Marion Nestle, author of the critically acclaimed Food Politics, argues that ensuring safe food involves more than washing hands or cooking food to higher temperatures. It involves politics. When it comes to food safety, billions of dollars are at stake, and industry, government, and consumers collide over issues of values, economics, and political power--and not always in the public interest. Although the debates may appear to be about science, Nestle maintains that they really are about control: Who decides when a food is safe?
She demonstrates how powerful food industries oppose safety regulations, deny accountability, and blame consumers when something goes wrong, and how century-old laws for ensuring food safety no longer protect our food supply. Accessible, informed, and even-handed, Safe Food is for anyone who cares how food is produced and wants to know more about the real issues underlying today's headlines.

About the Author, Marion Nestle

Marion Nestle is Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, and director of public health initiatives. She is the author of the prize-winning Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (California, 2002) and Nutrition in Clinical Practice (1985). She is also coeditor (with L. Beth Dixon) of Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Nutrition and Food

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Editorials

The Washington Post

Nestle tackles it all, with admirable thoroughness but an overly pedagogical prose style. Nevertheless, she quite rightly identifies the establishment of a single food-safety agency as the most important first step in tackling the increasingly complex problems surrounding the issue. — Nicols Fox

Marian Burros

Dr. Nestle has repeated the clearheaded thinking that made "Food Politics" an important addition to the debate about food in this country.

Her ability to look at issues as both a scientist and a consumer makes her a particularly useful source when food safety is up for discussion. Such sources are few and far between.—The New York Times

Library Journal

Nestle (nutrition and food studies, NYU; Food Politics) offers a candid analysis of the impact of science, politics, and consumer interests in dealing with food-borne microbial illness, genetically modified foods, and food bioterrorism. Consumers expect their food supply to be healthy and safe, but they are caught in a bind by a food industry that opposes regulations and by the fragmentation of food safety oversight functions among three federal agencies-the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food & Drug Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Bluntly noting that the food industry acts in its own economic self-interest rather than out of concern for the public welfare, Nestle also takes the biotechnology industry to task for using scientific rationales to ignore public concerns about genetically engineered foods. She reveals the susceptibility of the nation's food supply to tampering by terrorists and the lack of adequate safeguards to prevent such occurrences. Nestle's important work is the best analysis to date of the current state of affairs regarding food safety and the responsibilities and vulnerabilities of all concerned parties. Recommended for food, nutrition, and public health collections.-Irwin Weintraub, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.