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和新的食品安全措施可能对生态系统造成的有害影响方面的有效性。2006年，在萨利纳斯山谷（Salinas Valley）种植的菠菜引发了多州爆发的致命大肠杆菌疫情之后，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，最终于2011年通过了《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领域：农场。与此同时，食品安全的主要责任正在从政府转移到由复杂的标准制定和合规认证制度组成的异构、分散的网络上。这种转变给评估食品安全改革带来了问题。与100名从业者（种植者、农产品处理者/加工商、零售购买者、联邦州和县机构、合作推广代理、私人食品安全认证机构、保护和农民倡导活动家）的访谈将用于解决以下研究问题：自2006年大肠杆菌爆发以来，绿叶蔬菜的种植、加工和分销实践以及所需的劳动力发生了怎样的变化？与传统供应链相比，有机供应链在食品安全改革方面的实践变化有何不同？3. 如果有的话，科学专业知识或数据在这些变化中发挥了什么作用？4. 食品安全标准与供应链管理机构、责任规则和社区规范在多大程度上以何种方式影响了这些变化？研究结果将通过出版学术和应用期刊（如《加州农业》）广泛传播，并在从业者和学术会议上发表演讲。调查结果也将通过联合调查小组的博客和一般媒体渠道向更广泛的受众分享。此外，研究结果将与加州食品和农业部以及FDA共享。

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.