Factoring in food safety

Mad cow disease. E. coli. Hepatitis. Salmonella. Methylmercury. Dioxins. Bioterrorism. The news is filled with stories about food safety, and there are often conflicting ideas about what should be done. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. food supply is among the safest and most nutritious in the world. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that the spectrum of foodborne diseases is constantly changing. A century ago, typhoid fever and cholera were common foodborne diseases. Today, others have taken their place and we've discovered that several diseases, such as Guillain-Barre syndrome and acute kidney failure in children, are actually complications of foodborne infections.

Maintaining the safety of the food supply is a complex and ongoing priority that requires the cooperation of multiple agencies, often in multiple countries. Imagine yourself a government official. How do you decide where to spend your limited resources? Is the risk of bioterrorism greater than the risk of E. coli poisoning, and which of these is likely to affect more people? Can mad cow disease be fully controlled by regulating the cattle and food processing industries and what would be the repercussions of these regulations? How much must be spent to educate the public about the dangers of Salmonella and how likely is education to change behaviors?

Deciding which issues to address and how to address them requires weighing many factors from different perspectives, and that's why Professor Julie Caswell is in demand. Julie was a key figure in establishing the field of the economics of food safety and quality. Her research, which combined supply-side analysis of food quality with demand-side analysis of the consumer market, has become the foundation of this new and increasingly important area. Julie has edited two path-breaking books that have served as templates for the development and growth of the field. She literally wrote the book, so policy makers are quick to call on her when the tough decisions have to be made.

Julie has advised policymakers in the U.S., in the UK, in the European Union, and also in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Dr. Derrick Jones, who heads Analytical Services for the United Kingdom Food Standards Agency (FSA) says, "Julie has been a leading contributor to economic research work sponsored by the FSA to better understand the contribution of economics to food safety policy and in identifying alternative means of improving food safety."

Julie wanted to get involved because she sees policy work as "the application of the research that I do." Government agencies constantly face decisions on where they should direct their resources and what they should pay attention to. "This is a way of helping with that overall decision," says Julie. "It has a lot more impact than individual pieces of academic research."

Luckily, she's not alone. Julie is a key member of the Food Safety Research Consortium (FSRC), a collaboration of epidemiologists, lawyers, economists, and scientists that is developing decision-making tools for government officials. The consortium is completing its work on a risk-ranking model, the first set of its decision tools. "There is a tendency in government to devote resources to an area where there is a crisis," says Julie. "This tool will allow the government to look across all different types of food risks, assess what are the top five or ten risks, and then address them before we reach a crisis."

Michael Taylor, who has had top level positions at the FDA and the USDA, knows all too well what it's like to make the calls on complex issues. Taylor is now one of the lead organizers of the FSRC, and feels that integrating information from multiple fields is crucial. "Setting priorities in food safety is all about integrating information from diverse disciplines. Julie has provided enormous intellectual leadership in bridging the many natural and social science disciplines involved, and in making economics a key contributor to the decision process," says Taylor.

Julie sees the FSRC as providing a service that people in government do not have the resources to do themselves. "We can step back from it and take an integrated view so we can identify what information is most crucial to making intelligent choices on how much to spend on one policy relative to another." The guiding principle of the consortium's effort is that food safety policy should be science and data-driven. "These food safety policy issues are complex," says Julie. "That is why it is so very important to bring together people across the disciplines, arm them with good data, and seek the answers that are not clear from any one perspective."

Related links
Julie Caswell's Faculty Page
UMass Resource Econonmics Department