ABSTRACT
Food safety professionals and policy makers widely agree that better analytical methods are needed to help allocate government resources to those investments that have the greatest impact on making our food system safer. We examine the issue of what kind of priority-setting system is needed for the government to improve its performance. Our discussion considers general issues and is not specific to food safety. Indeed, because of our experience in environmental regulation and the workings of EPA, it is the experience of setting priorities at EPA and other environmental agencies that drives this chapter. Thus this chapter first briefly discusses the traditional priority-setting, problem-based paradigm of comparative risk assessment and its use by EPA and various state governments, closing with a critique. It then describes a solution-based approach to priority setting and presents an outline of what such a process might look like. Finally, the discussion is brought back to food safety to examine the implications of the chapter for priority setting by the government in this area.
