By: Edward Cho, Mitchell Turnage, Lawrence Wang, Nejib McGill

This past Thursday, July 7th, students had the opportunity to observe a panel, with members discussing the topic of food safety in America. They heard plenty of unique and educated perspectives regarding the topic and learned a great deal about how critical food safety really is. The importance of this issue is essential to understanding the necessity of passing an acceptable threshold of “cleanliness” for the public.

The four different individuals specialized in different areas of agriculture:

1. All natural raw dairy
2. USDA
3. Food Safety
4. Traditional dairy

Many students entered the panel discussion with little to no interest or prior knowledge on the significance of food safety and its relationship with the public health, molding an unexpected and interesting discussion. However, upon the conclusion of the panel, many students had completely changed opinions on food safety, largely a result of the myth-busting that took place concerning the misconception of food treatment and distribution.

A significant takeaway from this panel was the overarching theme: food is never safe. The speakers pointed out a distinctive difference between the safety and acceptance of certain foods distributed throughout the agricultural industry. Additionally, the myriad of backgrounds and occupations of the speakers presented multiple misconceptions that are commonly held ignorant by the public.  One of the heavily discussed debates during this panel was over the potential and known benefits of raw milk.  The organic farmer and conventional farmer had a respectful discussion over the explicit analysis of removing beneficial enzymes and essential nutrients such as Vitamin A. There is a need to understand the entire story before making an educated opinion consuming types of food.

Credits: both pictures were taken by students