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The Potential Consequences of Public Release of Food Safety and Inspection Service Establishment-Specific Data (2011) / Chapter Skim
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Summary
Pages 1-4

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From page 1...
... The agency's mission is carried out by issuing and enforcing food-safety regulations; conducting facility and product inspections, including sampling and testing; responding to foodborne-disease outbreaks; and conducting communication, education, and food-defense activities. FSIS collects a voluminous amount of data in support of its regulatory functions, but the two major types of FSIS data that are currently being considered for public release are sampling and testing data (derived from standard laboratory tests)
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From page 2...
... Through a review of the literature on the experience of other public agencies, the committee identified a number of potential benefits of public release of establishment-specific FSIS data, including providing incentives to protect brand reputation in food safety or to protect or enhance customer base and profitability; allowing downstream users to identify companies whose performance records are below and above the industry average and potentially to create economic pressure to improve food safety; providing better insights into strengths and weaknesses of different processing practices, which could lead to industrywide improvements in food-safety practices; enhancing performance benchmarking; and improving the consistency of inspector performance. The committee concluded that 2
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From page 3...
...  The committee concluded that to maximize its effectiveness and minimize its potential adverse unintended consequences, data disclosure needs to be guided by a carefully designed information-disclosure strategy. The committee also concluded that effective disclosure systems are designed to allow continuous improvement as users gain a better understanding of how the data might be used and as the agency responds to stakeholder input.
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From page 4...
...  In keeping with the purpose of attaining targeted transparency, public release of establishment-specific data is expected to result in improvement in food-safety efforts on the part of industry and government and ultimately have beneficial public-health outcomes. Although it is not possible to make a direct causal link between public data access and specific food-safety improvements, the committee concluded that measures of other outcomes of public release of establishment-specific data are available and that documenting those outcomes could provide insights into the relationship between data release and food safety.
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Key Terms

  • food safety
  • fsis data
  • public access
  • enforcement data
  • committee identified

  • unintended consequences
  • publicly available
  • potential adverse
  • text written
  • laboratory tests

  • standard laboratory
  • release program
  • confidential information
  • effective disclosure
  • provide public

  • affect public
  • public agencies
  • supporting public
  • fsis asked
  • data release

  • data types
  • testing data
  • especially data
  • improving food
  • data access

  • fsis collects
  • data publicly
  • data disclosure
  • improve food
  • regulatory data


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