title: Keep food safe to eat: healthful food must be safe as well as nutritious.
abstract: The inclusion of food safety in the 2000 edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is an important step toward ensuring their continued relevance for health promotion and disease prevention. The inclusion of food safety is consistent with the original intent of the Guidelines and the increased focus on food safety today; it also better reflects current knowledge about diet and long-term health. A wide spectrum of surveillance methods can be used to monitor progress in reducing the incidence of foodborne illness, from surveys of food safety attitudes to epidemiologic data on foodborne illness. Surveillance data show that progress is being made, but that much work remains to be done. Strategies for reducing foodborne illness require a farm-to-table approach and the involvement of all those who have a responsibility for food safety, i.e., government, industry and the public. Federal agencies and others are finding it useful to use a risk analysis framework, i.e., risk assessment, risk management and risk communication, as a means of organizing available information, identifying data gaps, quantifying risks for specific pathogens and foods, and presenting strategies for improvement. Food safety education is a critical part of the overall strategy to reduce the incidence of foodborne illness and complements regulatory, research and other activities.
authors.affiliation: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, USA.
authors.forename: C E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Woteki
authors.forename: S L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Facinoli
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Schor
mesh_terms: D003257:Consumer Product Safety; D005506:Food Contamination / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005511:Food Handling / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D005516:Food Microbiology; D016266:Food Parasitology; D017408:Guidelines as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D006266:Health Education; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D009749:Nutrition Surveys; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012308:Risk Management; D014481:United States