New food safety law: effectiveness on the ground.

The demand for safety in the US food supply from production to consumption necessitates a scientific, risk-based strategy for the management of microbiological, chemical, and physical hazards in food. The key to successful management is an increase in systematic collaboration and communication and in enforceable procedures with all domestic and international stakeholders. The enactment of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) aims to prevent or reduce large-scale food-borne illness outbreaks through stricter facility registration and records standards, mandatory prevention-based controls, increased facility inspections in the United States and internationally, mandatory recall authority, import controls, and increased consumer communication.

Principles for building public-private partnerships to benefit food safety, nutrition, and health research.

The present article articulates principles for effective public-private partnerships (PPPs) in scientific research. Recognizing that PPPs represent one approach for creating research collaborations and that there are other methods outside the scope of this article, PPPs can be useful in leveraging diverse expertise among government, academic, and industry researchers to address public health needs and questions concerned with nutrition, health, food science, and food and ingredient safety. A three-step process was used to identify the principles proposed herein: step 1) review of existing PPP guidelines, both in the peer-reviewed literature and at 16 disparate non-industry organizations; step 2) analysis of relevant successful or promising PPPs; and step 3) formal background interviews of 27 experienced, senior-level individuals from academia, government, industry, foundations, and non-governmental organizations.

How experts are chosen to inform public policy: can the process be improved?

The ever-increasing complexity of the food supply has magnified the importance of ongoing research into nutrition and food safety issues that have significant impact on public health. At the same time, ethical questions have been raised regarding conflict of interest, making it more challenging to form the expert panels that advise government agencies and public health officials in formulating nutrition and food safety policy. Primarily due to the growing complexity of the interactions among government, industry, and academic research institutions, increasingly stringent conflict-of-interest policies may have the effect of barring the most experienced and knowledgeable nutrition and food scientists from contributing their expertise on the panels informing public policy.

A research model for investigating the effects of artificial food colorings on children with ADHD.

The United Kingdom and European Union recently restricted the use of artificial food colorings (AFCs) to improve the health of children. These decisions provide an interesting case study of the role of scientific evidence in the assessment of food additives and risk to children's health and formulation of food policy. Although there continues to be uncertainty concerning the link between AFCs and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), policy decisions have been made that have far-reaching implications.