Newswise — Timely reports on several topics dealing with the food supply comprise the 362-page edition of Perspectives on Food-Safety Issues of Animal-Derived Foods, a volume of essays by the nation’s leading food safety researchers. The University of Arkansas Press published the book in association with the Food Safety Consortium (FSC).
The FSC is an alliance of researchers at the University of Arkansas, Iowa State University and Kansas State University that was established by Congress in 1988. Its work is funded annually through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The book includes a brief history of the FSC’s founding and its research accomplishments.
“Although great strides have been made by the scientific community in understanding the biology and dissemination of foodborne pathogens, recent media headlines publicizing pathogenic bacterial contamination of foods such as spinach and peanut butter indicate that foodborne disease is still a high-profile issue for the consumer,” said Steven C. Ricke, who holds the Donald W. “Buddy” Wray Chair in Food Safety at the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.
Ricke, the FSC’s research director at the UA, served as co-editor of the book with Frank T. Jones, who retired last year as associate director for extension at the UA Center of Excellence for Poultry Science.
The book consists of 24 essays written by researchers at universities, industries and government agencies across the United States. Their work is divided into five categories: preharvest foodborne pathogen ecology and intervention strategies, postharvest foodborne pathogen ecology, rapid methods and detection strategies for foodborne pathogens, antibiotics and antimicrobials in food safety, and emerging issues in food safety.
The book has its origins in an FSC symposium presented in 2006 at which several researchers from the organization’s three universities and other institutions delivered oral reports on a variety of food safety issues. In the following years, many of the symposium's presenters worked with other researchers to expand their reports into peer-reviewed book chapters that were reviewed by scientific experts in their respective fields and comments were addressed during the revisions and editing of the book chapters. The book is available for sale at the University of Arkansas bookstore, or through the UA Press at http://www.uapress.org/titles/fa09/ricke.html or 800-626-0090.
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