Doctoral Dissertation Research: The role of science in food safety: A case study of the California leafy greens industry

在Alastair Iles教授的指导下，博士生Patrick Baur将研究2011年食品安全现代化法案(FSMA)在确保绿叶蔬菜安全方面的有效性，以及新的食品安全措施可能对生态系统造成的有害影响。在2006年多个州爆发致命的大肠杆菌疫情后，公共和私营部门努力加强对新鲜农产品中微生物危害的控制，最终形成了2011年食品安全现代化法案(FSMA)，该法案将食品安全治理扩展到一个新的前沿：农场。与此同时，食品安全的主要责任正从政府移交给由复杂的标准制定和合规认证制度维系在一起的异质、分散的网络。这种转变给评估食品安全改革带来了问题。对100名从业者(种植者、农产品加工商、零售采购商、联邦州和县机构、合作推广机构、私人食品安全认证机构、环保和农民权益倡导者)的访谈将被用来回答以下研究问题：1.自2006年大肠杆菌爆发以来，绿叶蔬菜的种植、加工和分配做法以及所需的劳动力发生了怎样的变化2.与食品安全改革相关的做法与传统供应链相比有何不同，在生产量方面又有何不同？3.如果有的话，有什么作用科学专业知识或数据在这些变化中发挥了作用吗？4.食品安全标准与供应链管理机构、责任规则和社区规范一起，在多大程度上和以什么方式影响了这些变化？这些结果将通过出版学术和应用期刊，如加州农业，以及在从业者和学术会议上的演讲来广泛传播。调查结果还将在委员会的博客上和一般媒体上与更多的受众分享。此外，研究结果将与加州食品和农业部和FDA分享。

Under the supervision of Prof. Alastair Iles, Ph.D. student Patrick Baur will study the effectiveness of the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in assuring the safety of leafy greens and the deleterious effects on the ecosystem, that new food safety measures may be causing. In the wake of a deadly multi-state outbreak of E. coli in 2006 traced to spinach grown in the Salinas Valley, public and private sectors worked to strengthen controls over microbiological hazards in fresh produce, culminating in the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) which extends food safety governance to a new frontier: the farm field. At the same time, primary responsibility for food safety is devolving from government onto heterogeneous, decentralized networks held together by complex regimes of standard-setting and compliance-certification. This shift poses problems for evaluating food safety reforms. Interviews with 100 practitioners (growers, produce handlers/processors, retail purchasers, federal state and county agencies, cooperative extension agents, private food safety certifiers, conservation and farmer advocacy activists) will be used to address the following research questions: 1. How have leafy greens growing, processing, and distributing practices, and the labor entailed, changed since the 2006 E. coli outbreak 2. How have changes to practices related to food safety reform differed between organic as compared to conventional supply chains, and with respect to production volume? 3. What role, if any, does scientific expertise or data play in these changes? 4. To what extent and in what ways have food safety standards, in conjunction with the institutions of supply chain management, liability rules, and community norms, influenced these changes?The results will be disseminated broadly through publication academic and applied journals such as California Agriculture, and presentations at both practitioner and academic conferences. Findings will also be shared for a broader audience on the Co-PI's blog and through general media outlets. In addition, the findings will be shared with the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the FDA.