Focuses on the scientific and intellectual resources to construct a risk analysis framework for improving food safety. This title provides a common starting point for discussions about how to construct this framework. It provides an overview of the ways in which food safety law and administration affect priority setting.

An integrated, risk-based food safety system is the essential scientific basis for better priority setting. However, there has been little advance about how to integrate knowledge about food safety risks into a system-wide risk analysis framework. This book begins to answer this need by bringing together leading scientists, risk analysts, and economists, as well as experienced regulators and policy analysts.
Toward Safer Food includes a multi-disciplinary introduction to the existing data, research, and methodological and conceptual approaches on which a system-wide risk analysis framework must draw. It also recognizes that efforts to improve food safety will be influenced by institutional contexts. Intended to be accessible to people from a wide variety of backgrounds, the book retains the conceptual sophistication needed to understand the challenges that are inherent in improving food safety.

'This masterful summary of food safety science and policy is valuable for scholars, students, and concerned citizens. Since 1906, the focus of policy has shifted from addressing gross adulteration to invisible chemical and microbiological hazards that affect both public health and public confidence in the food supply. The authors give a concise survey of what is known about these risks and explain how to use risk analysis to set priorities and use resources more cost-effectively.' Lester Lave, Carnegie Mellon Tepper School, Carnegie Mellon University