Efficacy of Food Safety Training in Commercial Food Service.

Proper food safety training is essential to decrease incidences and overall rates of foodborne illnesses and outbreaks. Though many commercial restaurants should provide proper food safety training to food handler employees, this training is not always offered or effective. Here, we summarize the results of a primary literature study concerning the effectiveness of food safety training in commercial settings. The literature chosen for review contained only studies with experimental food safety training, with before and after training data. Through evaluation of these studies, the best practice for ensuring effective training and follow-through were the use of food safety training programs, which incorporated both knowledge and behavior-based training. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Food safety managers in food service establishments may consider reevaluating their current food safety training program to incorporate behavioral-based food safety training in addition to knowledge-based training.

Stakeholder attitudes towards cumulative and aggregate exposure assessment of pesticides.

This study evaluates the attitudes and perspectives of different stakeholder groups (agricultural producers, pesticide manufacturers, trading companies, retailers, regulators, food safety authorities, scientists and NGOs) towards the concepts of cumulative and aggregate exposure assessment of pesticides by means of qualitative in-depth interviews (n = 15) and a quantitative stakeholder survey (n = 65). The stakeholders involved generally agreed that the use of chemical pesticides is needed, primarily for meeting the need of feeding the growing world population, while clearly acknowledging the problematic nature of human exposure to pesticide residues. Current monitoring was generally perceived to be adequate, but the timeliness and consistency of monitoring practices across countries were questioned. The concept of cumulative exposure assessment was better understood by stakeholders than the concept of aggregate exposure assessment. Identified pitfalls were data availability, data limitations, sources and ways of dealing with uncertainties, as well as information and training needs. Regulators and food safety authorities were perceived as the stakeholder groups for whom cumulative and aggregate pesticide exposure assessment methods and tools would be most useful and acceptable. Insights obtained from this exploratory study have been integrated in the development of targeted and stakeholder-tailored dissemination and training programmes that were implemented within the EU-FP7 project ACROPOLIS.

Traditional alcohol production and use in three provinces in Vietnam: an ethnographic exploration of health benefits and risks.

BACKGROUND: Gaps exist in knowledge about the production and use of traditional alcohols, particularly in Asia. This study adds new information about the nature, production and sale of traditional distilled spirit alcohol in Vietnam. METHOD: This was an ethnographic study of traditional distilled spirit alcohol production in rural areas of three provinces in Vietnam. Researchers interviewed more than 300 individuals and recorded responses to general open-ended questions about local alcohol production. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and studied to discern what information about traditional alcohol was important to the speakers. RESULTS: Methods of production followed long-held traditions. Participants listed both personal and community benefits (economic, health, and social) from traditional alcohol making. Older people favoured traditional alcohol, while younger people favoured brand-name beer. Typically people consumed 2-4 drinks daily, mainly at meal times. People consumed more alcohol at special events and festivals. Distribution patterns ranged from low-risk distribution to family and neighbours to high-risk distribution by an agent who might combine alcohol from several producers, which increases the opportunity for dilution and adulteration. The most commonly listed health risks associated with locally-made alcohol were local air pollution and water pollution; participants also mentioned traffic crashes and bad public behaviour. Depending on the location, community leaders reported that production may be relatively stable or it may be declining. CONCLUSIONS: Traditional alcohol manufacture, sale, and use in Vietnam is a long-standing practice and low- to moderate-risk to health. There do not appear to be instances of accidental or intentional contamination. Urbanization seems to be affecting the market share of traditional alcohol as urbanized youth turn to branded products, mainly beer, making traditional alcohol making and consumption an activity mainly linked to older people in rural areas. In the rural areas surveyed, significant economic and social benefits are derived from traditional alcohol manufacture, sale, and use. Policy makers designing ways to reduce alcohol-related risks and harms need to give thoughtful consideration to the role traditional alcohol plays in the local society and to suggest changes that do not create unintended problems.

Food and the body politic.

Americans are in the midst of a food-consciousness revival: on television, in the mouth of the First Lady, in endless articles celebrating urban agriculture can be found a sudden enthusiasm for the politically and, perhaps, spiritually curated dinner table. In this special section, writers explore the perilous state of food and food politics in America and a wide range of responses on the Left. Marion Nestle, in her essay on the farm bill, describes how the existing policy disaster came to be, along with the relationship between Reagan-era deregulation and the obesity epidemic. Mark Engler describes both the successes and coopting of the strands of left-wing responses­buying organic, eating local, and agitating for fair trade­and asks, "What's a radical to eat?" Laurie Woolever uncovers the kind of labor exploitation endemic to the elite dining experience. Karen Bakker Le Billon compares American to French school lunches, unpacking the relationship between food and citizenship. Juliana DeVries explores vegetarianism and the politics of everyday life.

Utopian dream: a new farm bill.

In the fall of 2011, I taught a graduate food studies course at New York University devoted to the farm bill, a massive and massively opaque piece of legislation passed most recently in 2008 and up for renewal in 2012. The farm bill supports farmers, of course, but also specifies how the United States deals with such matters as conservation, forestry, energy policy, organic food production, international food aid, and domestic food assistance. My students came from programs in nutrition, food studies, public health, public policy, and law, all united in the belief that a smaller scale, more regionalized, and more sustainable food system would be healthier for people and the planet.

Making choices: ethics and vegetarianism.

I was seventeen and taking an elective course in Earth and Environmental Science. We were learning about farming and the food system­genetic modification, land use, organic labeling­when our teacher assigned us an article about beef. The article explained the following process: the U.S. government subsidizes corn, so we feed it to our cows, because corn is cheap and fattens the cows up quickly. Cows are biologically designed to eat grass, so their livers are unable to process the corn. The cows' livers would actually explode if they were permitted to grow to full maturity, but we slaughter them first. This, combined with their living in close quarters and wading in their own feces, causes the cows to get ill often, so we feed them a con-stant stream of antibiotics, a practice that strengthens bacterial strains such as E. coli. Roughly 78 percent of cows raised for beef undergo this process. Similarly nauseating practices are used to raise chickens, turkeys, and pigs, 99 percent, 97 percent, and 95 percent of which, respectively, come from factory farms. Nowadays, these details are less than shocking. Movies such as Food, Inc. and Super Size Me, as well as books such as The Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation have raised consciousness, if not much action, on the topic of our food system. But, for me, it was a new story.

The coastal metropolitan corn trade in later seventeenth-century England.

Exploiting hitherto unexamined London port book data, this article shows that during the last quarter of the seventeenth century the coastal metropolitan corn import trade was twice the size that historians relying on the work of Gras have assumed it to have been. More significantly, it demonstrates that Gras's failure to examine the capital's grain trade other than in terms of aggregate corn imports has disguised the nature and extent of its contribution to the development of the London economy. By the 1680s, the coastal trade comprised two distinct strands of roughly equal size: one providing food and drink for the London population, the other fuelling the overland trade of the capital. It is argued that the former was unnecessary for the provision of the city other than in barren years, but that the latter may have been indispensable for the development of the overland transport infrastructure of the metropolitan region at the height of the late seventeenth-century commercial revolution. Thanks largely to the agency of southern English mariners commanding large coasters, London's demand for fodder crops after the mid-1670s drew most of the coast stretching from Berwick to Whitehaven into the orbit of the metropolitan corn market.

An obsolete dichotomy? Rethinking the rural­urban interface in terms of food security and production in the global south.

The global food system is coming under increasing strain in the face of urban population growth. The recent spike in global food prices (2007­08) provoked consumer protests, and raised questions about food sovereignty and how and where food will be produced. Concurrently, for the first time in history the majority of the global population is urban, with the bulk of urban growth occurring in smaller-tiered cities and urban peripheries, or 'peri-urban' areas of the developing world. This paper discusses the new emerging spaces that incorporate a mosaic of urban and rural worlds, and reviews the implications of these spaces for livelihoods and food security. We propose a modified livelihoods framework to evaluate the contexts in which food production persists within broader processes of landscape and livelihood transformation in peri-urban locations. Where and how food production persists are central questions for the future of food security in an urbanising world. Our proposed framework provides directions for future research and highlights the role of policy and planning in reconciling food production with urban growth.

Local practice and global data: loyalty cards, social practices, and consumer surveillance.

Monitoring of consumers has become the most widespread mode of surveillance today. Being a multi-billion dollar business, the collected data are traded globally without much concern by the consumers themselves. Loyalty cards are an element with which such data are collected. Analyzing the role of loyalty cards in everyday practices such as shopping, I discuss how new modes of surveillance evolve and work and why they eventually make communication about data protection a difficult matter. Further, I will propose an alternative approach to the study of surveillance. This approach is concerned with local practices, focusing on subjective narratives in order to view surveillance as an integral part of culturally or socially manifested contexts and actions and not to view surveillance as something alien to society and human interaction. This will open up other possibilities to study modes of subjectivity or how individuals situate themselves within society.

Zimbabwean farmers in Nigeria: exceptional farmers or spectacular support?

Since 2004, white commercial farmers displaced under Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform programme have established new successful farms near the central Nigerian town of Shonga. This article explores the basis of that success. It addresses three key questions: (1) What has actually happened near Shonga since 2004? (2) What or who is driving the process of agrarian transformation? And (3) What are the long-term consequences for the peasantry since Nigerian agriculture is still largely peasant-based? It argues that contrary to popular myths of 'enterprising' white Zimbabwean farmers, the process is driven by a complex group of actors, including the national and regional states. Comparative evidence from similar transplantations of Zimbabwean farmers suggests that active state support is central to the success of Shonga. With respect to the relationship between the commercial farms and the peasantry, it is argued that all the synergies included in the project design to promote a symbiotic development have failed to materialize. As a result, the peasantry faces a process of 'development by dispossession'.

Competition and product quality in the supermarket industry.

This article analyzes the effect of competition on a supermarket firm's incentive to provide product quality. In the supermarket industry, product availability is an important measure of quality. Using U.S. Consumer Price Index microdata to track inventory shortfalls, I find that stores facing more intense competition have fewer shortfalls. Competition from Walmart­the most significant shock to industry market structure in half a century­decreased shortfalls among large chains by about a third. The risk that customers will switch stores appears to provide competitors with a strong incentive to invest in product quality.

Coordination processes and outcomes in the public service: the challenge of inter-organizational food safety coordination in Norway.

In 2004 Norway implemented a food safety reform programme aimed at enhancing inter-organizational coordination processes and outcomes. Has this programme affected inter-organizational coordination processes and outcomes, both vertically and horizontally ­ and if so how? This article employs the concept of inter-organizational coordination as an analytical tool, examining it in the light of two theoretical perspectives and coupling it with the empirical findings. The argument presented is that the chances of strong coordination outcomes may increase if inter-organizational processes feature a clear division of labour, arenas for coordination, active leadership, a lack of major conflicting goals, and shared obligations.

Food inflation in South Africa: some implications for economic policy.

This paper analyses the trends in food price movements in South Africa between 1980 and 2008. There are three main results emanating from the analysis in this paper. Firstly, food price movements have played a large role in generating inflationary episodes in South Africa. Secondly, while external influences do matter, South African food price movements are mainly due to domestic influences. This implies that national policy has an important role to play in taming domestic food price inflation. Thirdly, given the strong second round impacts, food price movements warrant special attention in monetary policymaking. Core measures of inflation that exclude food price movements may not accurately reflect the underlying inflationary pressures in the economy and could compromise the attainment of the goal of price stability.

"What we need is a crop ecologist": ecology and agricultural science in Progressive-era America.

Though they are often seen as foils for each other, ecology and agricultural science co-evolved. With shared roots in late nineteenth-century botany, ecologists and agronomists fostered important connections during the Progressive era that have been largely overlooked despite a number of finely nuanced studies of ecology's origins. But if 'applied ecology' once effectively meant agriculture, over the course of the first decades of the twentieth century the relationship between ecology and scientific agriculture grew strained. Agriculturists narrowed their focus to increasing yields, and ecologists sought to establish their discipline as a distant theoretical science and so distanced themselves from its agricultural applications. By the end of World War I, the process of disciplinary specialization was well underway. In time, the two disciplines diverged so completely that the once vital connections between them were obscured and forgotten.

Academic freedom or political maneuvers: Theodore W. Schultz and the oleomargarine controversy revisited.

The oleomargarine controversy was a case of academic freedom in which nineteen researchers resigned from Iowa State College to protest pressure from the dairy industry to change their research findings. This article explores the ways in which the boundaries between science and politics were more blurred than they seemed at the time or in subsequent historical treatments. The argument begins with a history of the unique composition of agricultural economics research at Iowa State, refocuses the affair from a conflict between the state college and the dairy industry to one among a much larger number of actors, and concludes by demonstrating that one professor, Theodore Schultz, was in the process of transitioning to a new career in prescriptive policy work with private policy associations that ended up being opposed to the practices and policy goals of some of the farm organizations in question.

Wave of mutilation: the cattle mutilation phenomenon of the 1970s.

During the 1970s many small-scale cattle ranchers across the Midwest reported finding their cattle mutilated. The episode, often dismissed as mass hysteria or sensationalized reporting, demonstrates the growing dissatisfaction of many ranchers concerning government intrusiveness and restrictive policies. These frustrations found a release in response to the mutilation phenomenon during which ranchers vented their anger by taking direct aim at the federal government. The turbulent economic conditions of the period paired with government interference in the cattle industry helped sustain the mutilation phenomenon as ranchers projected their fears and insecurities through the bizarre episode. The hostility ranchers showed toward the federal government during the mutilation scare presaged and helped provide the impetus for events such as the Sagebrush Rebellion. The mutilation phenomenon also underscores the pronounced effects of the libertarian movement of the 1960s that gave rise to the New Right and gained adherents across the West and Midwest.