When Food Kills : BSE, E.coli and disaster science

When Food Kills : BSE, E.coli and disaster science PDF Author: T. Hugh Pennington
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780191588778
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The 'food scare' concept took on new meaning in 1996, which opened with variant CJD emerging as the human form of BSE, and closed with Britain's worst E.coli O157 outbreak in central Scotland. As people died, so did trust in government and science. This book tells the story of these events, what led up to them, and what has happened since. It breaks new ground by dissecting these tragedies alongside catastrophes like Aberfan, Piper Alpha, Chernobyl, and the worst ever railway accidents in Ireland and Britain (Armagh and Quintinshill), as well as classical outbreaks of botulism, typhoid, E.coli O157 and Salmonella food poisoning. Britain's ability to win Nobel prizes marches with a propensity to have disasters. The book explains why, demonstrating failures in policy making, failures in the application of science, and failing inspectorates. A unique feature of this book is its breadth since it covers history, politics and law as well as science. It also makes some fascinating connections, like those between 1930's nuclear physics, E.coli, and molecular biology, and the links between manslaughter in 19th century mental hospitals, syphilis, the Nobel Prize, and the prospects for successfully treating variant CJD. Royal murderers, vaccine research in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and the race to develop the atom bomb appear as well. For the general reader its non-technical but authoritative account of the science behind these tragedies, its critical appraisal of how the government responded to them, its coverage of public inquiries and its analysis of risk will be informative and stimulating. Scientists will find its approach to the prion theory and the origins of BSE challenging and controversial. Policy makers will find not only diagnoses of what went wrong in the past, but remedies ror the future.

When Food Kills : BSE, E.coli and disaster science

When Food Kills : BSE, E.coli and disaster science PDF Author: T. Hugh Pennington
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780191588778
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book Here

Book Description
The 'food scare' concept took on new meaning in 1996, which opened with variant CJD emerging as the human form of BSE, and closed with Britain's worst E.coli O157 outbreak in central Scotland. As people died, so did trust in government and science. This book tells the story of these events, what led up to them, and what has happened since. It breaks new ground by dissecting these tragedies alongside catastrophes like Aberfan, Piper Alpha, Chernobyl, and the worst ever railway accidents in Ireland and Britain (Armagh and Quintinshill), as well as classical outbreaks of botulism, typhoid, E.coli O157 and Salmonella food poisoning. Britain's ability to win Nobel prizes marches with a propensity to have disasters. The book explains why, demonstrating failures in policy making, failures in the application of science, and failing inspectorates. A unique feature of this book is its breadth since it covers history, politics and law as well as science. It also makes some fascinating connections, like those between 1930's nuclear physics, E.coli, and molecular biology, and the links between manslaughter in 19th century mental hospitals, syphilis, the Nobel Prize, and the prospects for successfully treating variant CJD. Royal murderers, vaccine research in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and the race to develop the atom bomb appear as well. For the general reader its non-technical but authoritative account of the science behind these tragedies, its critical appraisal of how the government responded to them, its coverage of public inquiries and its analysis of risk will be informative and stimulating. Scientists will find its approach to the prion theory and the origins of BSE challenging and controversial. Policy makers will find not only diagnoses of what went wrong in the past, but remedies ror the future.

When Food Kills

When Food Kills PDF Author: Thomas Hugh Pennington
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780198525172
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Ever since Edwina Currie's salmonella, Britain has seemed cursed by major food safety scares, with E.coli and BSE particularly prominent. Amidst tabloid frenzy and recrimination, the public is dependent upon sober scientific risk assessment and rational evaluation of what went wrong. Hugh Pennington has been at the forefront of this as a scientist, expert witness and commentator, and this book is his accessible but rigorous account of these diseases and the events surrounding them. This is a disaster book for the general reader giving authoritative but non-technical accounts of BSE/variant CJD and E.coli O157 all in the context of disasters (like Piper Alpha, Aberfan, and rail crashes), history and politics.

Medicine, the Market and the Mass Media

Medicine, the Market and the Mass Media PDF Author: Virginia Berridge
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134408560
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This collection opens up the post war history of public health to sustained research-based historical scrutiny. Medicine, the Market and the Mass Media examines the development of a new view of 'the health of the public' and the influences which shaped it in the post war years. Taking a broad perspective the book examines developments in Western Europe, and the relationships between Europe and the US. The essays looks at the dual legacy of social medicine through health services and health promotion, and analyse the role of mass media along with the connections between public health and industry. This international collection will appeal to public health professionals, students of the history of medicince and of heath policy

Food, risk and politics

Food, risk and politics PDF Author: Ed Randall
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847796370
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
This is a book about the risk politics of food safety. Food-related risks regularly grab the headlines in ways that threaten reasoned debate and obstruct sensible policy making. In this book, Ed Randall explains why this is the case. He goes on to make the case for a properly informed and fully open public debate about food safety issues. He argues that this is the true antidote to the politics of scare, scandal and crisis. The book skilfully weaves together the many different threads of food safety and risk politics and offers a particularly rewarding read for academics and students in the fields of politics and media studies. It will also appeal to scholars from other disciplines, particularly social psychology and the food sciences. The book is a lively and exceptionally readable account of food safety and risk politics that will engage policy makers and the general reader. It promises to help us all manage food safety issues more intelligently and successfully.

Food Poisoning, Policy, and Politics

Food Poisoning, Policy, and Politics PDF Author: David F. Smith
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 9781843831389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Study of the 1963/4 typhoid outbreak, highlighting issues and debates which are strikingly relevant today. The problem of food poisoning and food-borne infections is currently one of vigorous debate, highlighted since the 1980s by numerous outbreaks and scares involving salmonella in lettuce and eggs, listeria in cheese, the links between vCJD and BSE, E.Coli 0157 in cooked meats, and foot and mouth disease. Yet, as this book shows, the various issues involved were important as early as 1963/4, when there were serious typhoid outbreaks in Harlow, South Shields, Bedford, and Aberdeen, traced to contaminated corned beef imported from Argentina. Based upon extensive research, using archives which have only recently become available, private papers, and interviews as well as secondary literature, the book analyses the course of the outbreak and looks at the responses of politicians, officials, health professionals, business interests, the media and the public. It also considers the difficult issue of the weighing offood safety against international trade and other business and economic interests; conflicts between government departments; rivalry between professionals such as doctors and veterinarians; the effects upon and influence of victims and local communities; and the conduct of and responses to an official enquiry. Overall, it draws out generic lessons for how such epidemics should be handled, adding an historical perspective to contemporary debates.

Microcosm

Microcosm PDF Author: Carl Zimmer
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307377563
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A Best Book of the YearSeed Magazine • Granta Magazine • The Plain-DealerIn this fascinating and utterly engaging book, Carl Zimmer traces E. coli's pivotal role in the history of biology, from the discovery of DNA to the latest advances in biotechnology. He reveals the many surprising and alarming parallels between E. coli's life and our own. And he describes how E. coli changes in real time, revealing billions of years of history encoded within its genome. E. coli is also the most engineered species on Earth, and as scientists retool this microbe to produce life-saving drugs and clean fuel, they are discovering just how far the definition of life can be stretched.

Food Safety

Food Safety PDF Author: Nina E. Redman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1598840495
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This work is a detailed survey of food safety issues today, from E-coli contamination in fruits and vegetables to food production practices that increase antibiotic resistance. Is our food safe? Much of the corn, soybeans, and canola oil we eat has been genetically modified, but we don't know the long-term effects of GM foods on our health and the environment. We also consume antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria through the meat we eat, and we face new threats like mad cow disease, avian flu, and bioterrorism. Food Safety: A Reference Handbook, Second Edition provides a broad, readable, and level-headed overview of these and other food safety controversies. Through a combination of statistics and substantive information, it delineates the nature and scope of the issues. It also introduces readers to the researchers, activists, industries, and government agencies that play a role in the battle for food safety—an issue that impacts us all.

Risk Communication and Public Health

Risk Communication and Public Health PDF Author: Kenneth Calman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199562849
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
"Bringing together a wide variety of perspectives on risk communication, this up-to-date review of a high profile and topical area includes practical examples and lessons."--[Source inconnue].

Fat

Fat PDF Author: Sander L. Gilman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 074565875X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
The modern world is faced with a terrifying new ‘disease’, that of ‘obesity’. As people get fatter, we have come to see excess weight as unhealthy, morally repugnant and socially damaging. Fat it seems has long been a national problem and each age, culture and tradition have all defined a point beyond which excess weight is unacceptable, ugly or corrupting. This fascinating new book by Sander Gilman looks at the interweaving of fact and fiction about obesity, tracing public concern from the mid-nineteenth century to the modern day. He looks critically at the source of our anxieties, covering issues such as childhood obesity, the production of food, media coverage of the subject and the emergence of obesity in modern China. Written as a cultural history, the book is particularly concerned with the cultural meanings that have been attached to obesity over time and to explore the implications of these meanings for wider society. The history of these debates is the history of fat in culture, from nineteenth-century opera to our global dieting obsession. Fat, A Cultural History of Obesity is a vivid and absorbing cultural guide to one of the most important topics in modern society.

Diet for a Large Planet

Diet for a Large Planet PDF Author: Chris Otter
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226826538
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
A history of the unsustainable modern diet—heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar—that requires more land and resources than the planet is able to support. We are facing a world food crisis of unparalleled proportions. Our reliance on unsustainable dietary choices and agricultural systems is causing problems both for human health and the health of our planet. Solutions from lab-grown food to vegan diets to strictly local food consumption are often discussed, but a central question remains: how did we get to this point? In Diet for a Large Planet, Chris Otter goes back to the late eighteenth century in Britain, where the diet heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar was developing. As Britain underwent steady growth, urbanization, industrialization, and economic expansion, the nation altered its food choices, shifting away from locally produced plant-based nutrition. This new diet, rich in animal proteins and refined carbohydrates, made people taller and stronger, but it led to new types of health problems. Its production also relied on far greater acreage than Britain itself, forcing the nation to become more dependent on global resources. Otter shows how this issue expands beyond Britain, looking at the global effects of large agro-food systems that require more resources than our planet can sustain. This comprehensive history helps us understand how the British played a significant role in making red meat, white bread, and sugar the diet of choice—linked to wealth, luxury, and power—and shows how dietary choices connect to the pressing issues of climate change and food supply.