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Animal Health, Food Safety Link Studied

A team of experts took on the challenge to look at the issue of how animal health impacts food safety. Official release of the report on the topic will be made today in Washington, D.C. Alan Mathew, head of Purdue University's Department of Animal Sciences was a contributing author to the report titled "Healthy Animals Make Confident Consumers."

Mathew and five other members of a task force organized by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology were involved in the report. "This was our attempt to review the literature regarding animal health and food safety and determine what research needs to be conducted to determine the connection between the care and health of food animals and food safety," Mathew says in a release issued by Purdue.

At the same time, the report notes, consumers want "virtually risk-free food" and expect farmers and processors to provide it.

You can download the free report here.

Other report co-authors are Scott Hurd, associate professor of veterinary science, Iowa State University, who was also the task force chair; Barbara Masters, a veterinarian and senior policy adviser with Olsson Frank Weeda law firm in Washington, D.C.; Steve Oliver, a professor of animal science at the University of Tennessee; Rod Preston, animal science professor emeritus at Texas Tech University; and Randall S. Singer, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota.