Food safety issues are increasingly front page news, often tied to systemic changes in the global food supply. This volume of Choices brings together a set of articles that highlight some emerging issues in food safety and how they are being addressed.

A quantitative understanding of the relationship between food consumption and foodborne illness seems quite basic to managing food safety hazards. This article examines why this relationship is difficult to measure, what is being done to overcome that difficulty, and how these estimates could improve public policy.

An examination of Food and Drug Administration import refusals and different levels of economic development of exporting countries found that as the developing country share of food import value started to increase in 2002, their share of the total number of import violations also began to increase.

U.S. demand for Mexico-grown fruits and vegetables is increasing. Imported foods have been associated with significant food safety recalls and concerns about defense risks. While import inspections should help protect against outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, it is neither possible nor optimal to inspect all produce at the port of entry. A threat, vulnerability, and consequence prevention (TVCP) model is used to evaluate the effectiveness of current inspection practices and derive implications for intelligent inspection systems to help mitigate potential food import risks.

Data from two independent nationally representative samples of American adults provide insight into what the public hears and does during national foodborne illness outbreaks. Using the 2006 spinach advisory and the 2008 tomato and pepper advisories as exemplars, an empirically-derived series of conclusions and recommendations are provided.

This article examines the impact of the 2006 E. coli outbreaks on consumer demand for salad vegetables using retail scanner data. The results suggest that during and after the outbreak period other salad vegetables were substituted for spinach, and consumers were less responsive to price changes on affected products.