title: Protecting our vulnerable food supply.
abstract: From farmyard to dinner table, our food supply presents ample opportunity for dangerous microorganisms or their products to thrive and infect or intoxicate human beings, often with harmful and sometimes fatal results. Traditional controls to protect the food supply include, but are not limited to, law and regulation. But law and regulation are only enablers, an underpinning. Most important to protection of the food supply is organizational leadership and commitment at federal, state, and local levels of government to protect the public's health. This article provides examples of such leadership in locales as diverse as Australia, New Zealand, and Genesee County, Michigan. Even when a supportive law is in place and the will and resources to make the law work exist, competing political and economic world-views are constantly at work to amend the law and thus adversely affect the public's health.
authors.affiliation: Genesee County Health Department, Flint, Michigan, USA.
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Pestronk
authors.forename: Ward
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Lindsay
authors.forename: Neal
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Fortin
authors.forename: Brendon
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kearney
authors.forename: Robert E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Eadie
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000517:prevention & control; D005506:Food Contamination / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000517:prevention & control; D019649:Food Industry / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D005523:Food Supply / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000592:standards; D058870:Food, Organic; D006077:Government Agencies; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D007881:Legislation, Food; D009520:New Zealand; D011635:Public Health Administration / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D011640:Public Policy; D014481:United States