Introduction
The term “food safety” has come to be associated with a variety of technical and regulatory mechanisms designed to minimize the risk of morbidity and mortality associated with human consumption of food. The ethics of food safety comprises philosophical questions that arise in connection with conceptualization of risks tied to food consumption, the assignment of responsibility and liability for precautionary measures and for actualized harms, and interpretive ambiguity that occurs in the performance of regulatory standards and precautionary measures, including enforcement. More broadly, the emergence of food safety as a regulatory and conceptual paradigm is typical of the social, political, and cultural themes that define late capitalism and globalization. In this connection, contestation over the safety of food has become an element in broader forms of resistance to...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Almas, R. (1999). Food trust, ethics and safety in risk society. Sociological Research Online, 4(3). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/4/3/almas.html. Accessed 4 Feb 2014.
Ames, B. N. (1983). Dietary carcinogens and anticarcinogens. Science, 221, 1256–1264.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.
Buckley, J. A. (2013). Artisan food processing and food safety regulation in Michigan: An actor-network study of interactions, interests, and fluid boundaries. Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University, East Lansing.
Chan, Z. C. Y., & Lai, W.-F. (2009). Revisiting the melamine contamination event in China: Implications for ethics in food technology. Trends in Food Science and Technology, 20, 366–373.
Comstock, G. (2010). Ethics and genetically modified foods. In G. Franz-Theo, H. W. Ingensiep, & M. Meinhardt (Eds.), Food ethics (pp. 49–66). New York: Springer.
Dreyer, M., Renn, O., Cope, S., & Frewer, L. (2010). Including social impact assessment in food safety governance. Food Control, 21, 1620–1628.
Elliott, K. C. (2011). Is a little pollution good for you?: Incorporating societal values in environmental research. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gaworski, M., Kaiser, M., & Lien, M. E. (2006). Ethics and transformation of polish food chain. In Ethics and the politics of food: Preprints of the 6th congress of the European society for agricultural and food ethics: EurSAFE 2006 Oslo, Norway, June 22–24, 2006 (pp. 270–273). Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers.
Hatanaka, M., Bain, C., & Busch, L. (2005). Third-party certification in the global agrifood system. Food Policy, 30, 354–369.
Havinga, T. (2006). Private regulation of food safety by supermarkets. Law & Policy, 28, 515–533.
Kearns, P., & Mayers, P. (1999). Substantial equivalence is a useful tool. Nature, 401, 640–640.
Knight, A. J., & Warland, R. (2005). Determinants of food safety risks: A multi-disciplinary approach*. Rural Sociology, 70, 253–275.
Levidow, L. (2001). Precautionary uncertainty: Regulating GM crops in Europe. Social Studies of Science, 31, 842–874.
Lodge, M. (2011). Risk, regulation and crisis: Comparing national responses in food safety regulation. Journal of Public Policy, 31(1), 25–50.
Maloni, M. J., & Brown, M. E. (2006). Corporate social responsibility in the supply chain: An application in the food industry. Journal of Business Ethics, 68, 35–52.
Mather, E. C., & McNiel, P. (2006). The online professional master of science in food safety degree program at Michigan State University: An innovative graduate education in food safety. Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 33, 272–278.
Millstone, E. (2009). Science, risk and governance: Radical rhetorics and the realities of reform in food safety governance. Research Policy, 38, 624–636.
Millstone, E., & van Zwanenberg, P. (2001). Politics of expert advice: Lessons from the early history of the BSE saga. Science and Public Policy, 28, 99–112.
Millstone, E., & Van Zwanenberg, P. (2002). The evolution of food safety policy–Making institutions in the UK, EU and codex Alimentarius. Social Policy & Administration, 36, 593–609.
Millstone, E., Brunner, E., & Mayer, S. (1999). Beyond ‘substantial equivalence. Nature, 401(6753), 525–526.
Nestle, M. (2002). Food politics: How the food industry influences nutrition and health. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pei, X., Tandon, A., Alldrick, A., Giori, L., Huang, W., & Yang, R. (2011). The China melamine milk scandal and its implications for food safety regulation. Food Policy, 36, 412–420.
Redmond, E. C., & Griffith, C. J. (2003). Consumer food handling in the home: A review of food safety studies. Journal of Food Protection, 66, 130–161.
Regenstein, J. M., & Regenstein, C. E. (2001). A brief introduction to the kosher laws and possible implications for food safety. In C. Wilson & S. Droby (Eds.), Microbial food contamination (pp. 135–147). Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Thompson, P. B. (2002). Why food biotechnology needs an opt out. In B. Bailey & M. Lappé (Eds.), Engineering the farm: Ethical and social aspects of agricultural biotechnology (pp. 27–44). Washington, DC: Island Press.
Thompson, P. B. (2007). Food biotechnology in ethical perspective (2nd ed.). Dordrecht: Springer.
Vileisis, A. (2008). Kitchen literacy: How we lost knowledge of where food comes from and why we need to get it back. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Zwart, H. (2000). A short history of food ethics. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 12, 113–126.
Further Reading
Burkhardt, J. (2011). The ethics of food safety in the 21st century: Who keeps the public good? In D. Kaplan (Ed.), The philosophy of food (pp. 140–160). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Early, R. (2002). Food ethics: A decision making tool for the food industry? International Journal of Food Science and Technology, 37, 339–349.
Millstone, E. (1996). Food safety: The ethical dimensions. In B. Mepham (Ed.), Food ethics. London: Routledge.
Yiannas, F. (2009). Food safety culture: Creating a behavior-based food safety system. Dordrecht: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature B.V.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Thompson, P.B. (2019). Food Safety. In: Kaplan, D.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1179-9_468
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1179-9_468
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-024-1178-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-024-1179-9
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities