Dear Colleagues,

In the 1930s, the US food microbiologist Samuel Cate Prescott (1872–1962), his Swiss colleague Karl Friedrich Meyer (1884–1974), and the UK microbiologist Sir Graham Selby Wilson (1895–1987) first suggested to follow a more active intervention strategy against food-transmitted diseases of microbial aetiology. In the early 1960s, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduced the basics of a novel food safety assurance system (Ross-Nazal, 2007), which evolved, in the 1970s, into the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) concept (Lachance, 1997; Weinroth et al., 2018).

Thus, the fundaments of the Longitudinally Integrated Safety Assurance (LISA) approach were created (Mossel, 1989). Over the past few decades, the latter concept has inspired many (veterinary) food microbiologists to stress the longitudinal character of this approach by suggesting more ‘jazzy’ terms such as: ‘From Conception to Consumption’, ‘From Production to Consumption’, ‘From Stable to Table’ and ‘From Farm to Fork’ (or variants such as ‘From Pond to Fork’ or ‘From Forest to Fork’ when one wants the reader to concentrate on particular foods such as fish or game). In essence, the researchers took the same path as epidemiologists would have taken when investigating outbreaks of foodborne disease, the only difference being that epidemiologists would follow the ‘top-down’ route, and scientists working to reveal a functioning LISA principle would take a ‘bottom-up’ direction in order to prevent conditions that would render food unsafe for consumption.

‘From Farm to Fork’ was recently chosen by European authorities as the title of a document released in May 2020. This document describes the declared EU policies aiming at reducing the environmental/climate impact of primary production, while at the same time ensuring fair economic returns for farmers and striving to meet the ‘Green Deal’ objectives—that is, achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) such as improving food security by reducing food loss and waste without impairing food safety. The big question is whether or not the resource footprints of future food production in terms of land, water, energy and resources will be within our common planetary boundaries (Steffen et al., 2015). This means that resolving conflicting goals will become a key challenge. A ‘Farm-to-Fork’ framework might be indispensable for meeting our future challenges in terms of food safety, security and sustainability (Hanning et al., 2012).

Obviously, this interpretation of ‘Farm to Fork’ goes far beyond its original purpose of stressing the longitudinal approach to safety assurance rather than the traditional end-product-oriented control of foods of animal origin.

This realisation might complicate the definition of the scope of this Special Issue. The reader should be aware that the Issue’s authors have been selected based on their familiarity with (the history of) food microbiology and longitudinal safety assurance, and that they represent the ‘thick of the action’ when food safety assurance decisions need to be made, albeit in a complex context. Consequently, this Special Issue’s Guest-Editor encourages contributions on the state of the art in longitudinal food safety assurance, with the ambition to contribute to the evidence-based trade-offs that our future food safety, security and sustainability necessitate.

References

Hanning, I.B., O’Bryan, C.A., Crandall, P.G., Ricke, S.C. (2012). Food Safety and Food Security. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):9

Lachance, P.A. (1977). How HACCP started. Food Technol., 51:3

Mossel, D.A.A. (1989). Adequate protection of the public against food-transmitted diseases of microbial aetiology. Achievements and challenges half a century after the introduction of the Prescott-Meyer-Wilson strategy of active intervention. Int. J. Food Microbiol., 1989, Dec. 19 (4) 271-94 doi: 10.1016/0168-1605(89)90097-4.

Ross-Nazal, J. (2007). “From Farm to Fork”: how space food standards interpreted the food industry and changed food safety standards. Chapter 12, p 219-236. In:  Steven J. Dick, Roger D. Launius (Eds.): Societal impact of Space Flight, NASA History Division, Office of External Relations, SP-2007-4801.

Steffen, W.K., Richardson, K., Rockström, S.E., Cornell, S.E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E.M., Biggs, R, Carpenter, S.R., de Vries, W., de Wit, C.A., Folke, C., Gerten, D., Heinke, J., Mace, G.M., Persson, L.M. Ramanathan, V., Reyers, B., Sörlin, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347: 736, 1259855, DOI: 10.1126/science 125985.

Weinroth, M.D. Belk, A.D., Belk, K.E. (2018). History, development and current status of food safety systems worldwide. Anim. Front. 2018 Aug 30;8(4):9-15. doi: 10.1093/af/vfy016. eCollection 2018 Oct.

Emer. Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Frans J.M. Smulders, DVM, PhD, Hon.Memb./Dipl. ECVPH
Guest Editor

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• food safety
• food microbiology
• risk management
• Longitudinally Integrated Safety Assurance (LISA)
• farm-to-fork
• pond-to-fork
• sustainable development goals