One of her central tenets is that the food makers need to satisfy the public’s value based concerns with the same perniciousness they purportedly apply to the science side of the equation – if we want to feel as if we have a safe food supply. She breaks the world of food safety into two what we would call observational positions:Īs she explains throughout the later parts of the book, parties involved with actually making food safe tend to view the situation in a purely scientific sense – ie, the benefits of GMO far outweigh the risks - whereas consumers in the general public use value based judgements – ie, the fear of what GMO could be outweigh the benefits. in molecular biology form UC Berkeley, a spot on the FDA’s Food Advisory Committee and Science Board and the USDA/DHHS Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Marion Nestle does not really need a formal introduction to remind the reader she knows what’s going on – her prose does the job for her.Īnd it’s Nestle prose that sets up an interesting dichotomy around which the entire book spins.

This style immediately establishes credibility and you will not find yourself asking whether or not the author is qualified to speak on the subject. An avalanche of professional observations and research accompanies every point in this book. The method is good – because if you are thirsty for facts, it prepares you for the coming Thanksgiving-like feast. We meet all the players, agencies and of course trickery in a haphazard fashion, instead of having it all methodically laid out. Her treatment of the subject acts as an interesting twist on the typical introductions you generally see with non-fiction books. Going Down to Get Upīut before Nestle’s takes us down that dark road, we are introduced to this dysfunctional world very quickly with the story of how Starlink genetically modified corn made its appearance throughout the food supply in countries with bans on GMO crops. For it becomes painfully obvious in Nestle’s work that, in fact, we do not have a food safety system in the United States and a wide array of interests are actively working to keep it that way. You may want to read the first part to better understand this article:Īfter reading Marion Nestle’s Safe Food, you will see the world of irony and contradiction finds a comfortable home in food safety. NOTE: This article is the 2nd part of a series about Food Safety in the United States.

What if this latest peanut-salmonella outbreak in 2009 was completely preventable? What if the procedures to prevent it were already in place? Even worse, what if we didn’t even have a food safety system at all?

Safe food marion nestle