Food safety: from plough to plate

摘要

The crisis over bovine spongiform encephalo-pathy may have been the most serious scare to hit Britain's food industry, but it was not an isolated event It followed a stream of other concerns-about food additives, irradiation, salmonella in eggs, Escherichia coli, pesticides, genetically modified tomatoes, and the rising incidence of food poisoning. On each occasion ministers, producers, and retailers have struggled to restore consumer confidence. But their efforts have increasingly misfired, being seen as patronising, misleading, and stemming more from a desire to protect profits than to protect the public's health. Now at last it seems clear mat the problem is not simply the public's perception that food is unsafe but real failings in the system of safeguards.