September 3, 1997
TO: Working Group on Food Contamination and the Quality of Public Health
FROM: Ed Jennings
There have been several incidents recently in which contaminated food apparently posed
a significant threat to public health. The incidents included fruit from Latin America and
meat from the Hudson Foods processing plant in Nebraska. You should consider
yourselves to be staff in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for making
recommendations to the president and the Congress. Your information sources include
news sources; official records, documents and publications; expert analyses; interest
groups; and interviews.
You should identify the range and extent of problems and concern about food
contamination. How wide spread is the problem? What are its dimensions? How many
people are affected? What are the consequences? What has been the level of public
concern? Is there an active issue network addressing the issue?
You need to review and examine carefully existing proposals for improving food safety.
Analyze those proposals with respect to which they address the problem or problems
facing the food system, their likely effectiveness as solutions, their costs, and their
administrative feasibility. What implementation barriers would have to be overcome to
put the proposal in place and make them work effectively.?
Although you should focus on the technical soundness of solutions to the problem(s), you
also need to analyze the politics of the situation. What values and interests are at stake?
What interests have been mobilized? What is the scope of conflict? How will these factors
affect the outcome?