Ensuring Safe Food : From Production to Consumption

Protecting the food supply from harmful agents and thus promoting the public health is an important activity of government. The current system for food safety in the United States is a complex and multi-layered activity that depends on multiple players that include the federal government, state governments, local governments, universities, the news media, and, of course, the public itself, both as preparers and handlers of food and as consumers.
These varied roles which each segment plays in food safety, with their many complexities and charges, must be integrated within the equally complex and changing system of the food supply from production to final consumption. Though the federal roles of guidance, research, surveillance, enforcement, and education are extremely important, they represent only one part of the food safety system