On August 20, the National Academy of Sciences released Ensuring Safe Food from Production to Consumption, a report on the effectiveness of the U.S. food safety system. The report calls for a science-based and unified approach to lead the nation's food safety efforts. "As the challenges to ensuring safe food change and grow more complex, it is crucial that we rethink how to address the greatest threats to human health," said study committee chair John C. Bailar III, Ph.D., M.D., chair of the department of health studies at the University of Chicago. "The United States lacks a central authority to coordinate food safety and some old laws don't allow for flexible responses to today's food safety issues," he added.

Overall, the report calls for all aspects of our nation's food safety programs to be based on science. It also suggests that the federal government establish a central coordinating function for food safety with legislative authority. Further, the government should eliminate the continuous inspection system currently in place for meat and poultry and replace it with a science-based approach. For imported foods, the committee recommends statutes mandating that all imported foods come only from countries with food safety standards deemed equivalent to U.S. standards.

Following the report, the President proposed by executive order the establishment of an interagency council to coordinate activities of the 12 or more federal agencies involved in food safety.

The study was a joint activity of the Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine, and the Board on Agriculture, National Research Council.

The complete report can be purchased through the National Academy Press at 800-624-6242 or http://www.nap.edu.