Preharvest Food Safety: What Do the Past and the Present Tell Us About the Future?

This paper summarizes the Pre-Harvest Food Safety Panel presentation at the Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health conference, "Be Safe, Be Profitable: Protecting Workers in Agriculture," Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, January 27-28, 2010. The ways we produce food and the ways consumers perceive agriculture have changed, bringing new challenges and new opportunities for human, animal, and environmental well-being. Issues that increasingly confront food producers today are about assuring the quality, safety, and security of the food products they produce. There are challenges and opportunities for protecting human health by controlling the presence of chemical, biological, and physical hazards in food. Today, demand for food products and the food producer's financial bottomline are affected by emerging preharvest acquired biological hazards such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, antibiotic resistance, multidrug-resistant Salmonella, enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC; e. g. E. coli O157:H7), and other food safety pathogens. Years ago these issues were largely unheard of, but other zoonotic pathogens dominated the food safety landscape. Lessons of the past and examination of the present may provide insight into the future of food safety. There remains a need to fund food safety research that helps policy makers understand the marginal costs and benefits of science-based interventions at various levels of food production.