Food-Safety Books

As I Kindergarten teacher, I recommend this book to parents or teachers who want their child to learn about fire safety. Such a great rhyming book that hold children captive. My children wanted me to read it again when we finished! Best fire safety book out there!

We really like this book and helped introduce fire safety to our 4.5 & 3 year old girls. It is a bit long for my 3 year old (she didn't sit thru the whole book, but was in the room and able to talk about it afterwards). Gets the conversation going about not hiding, a family meeting place outside of the home, and not going back for treasured items Highly recommended!!

I liked this book so much that we got one copy for every school in the district.We even have a dusty the smoke smeller dragon puppet show to add to the fire safety educational program here.About 20.000 children hear this life saving message each year.Kent Landsberg

I bought this is as a bifthday gift for my daughter. She was having a tea party. I really liked that this was a cute story with fun illustrations as well as imparted a little bit about fire safety, a much needed topic of discussion now that my children are getting old enough.

I have been a professional fire fighter for more than twenty years. I thoroughly enjoy reading this book to my kids and to school children whenever I have the chance. The book covers important fire safety topics but folds the safety curriculum into a wonderful story. I have read this story aloud a hundred times and it has always been a wonderful experience. -- If I could, I would place a copy of this book into every young child's classroom.

Wow, this book is right on! Having been to China numberous times, I was shocked that they are sending us any food, but not suprised at the lead content of toys. A must read to protect your family, its all laid out in an easy to read format.

Recall: Food & Toy Safety: An American Crisis
Susie Hoeller has written an easy to read book about a very scary international problem. As a mother of five children, I am amazed that they have all lived past 17! This is a nightmare!

In order to stop the production of unsafe toys, food, and children's apparel, we have to encourage the companies to produce safe products. We can only do that by having a purchasing public that knows of these unsafe products and is hyper vigilent. This book should be required reading for high school students. They are our future purchasers, and an informed young adult will be more likely to choose safe products.

After reading Ms. Hoeller's book, I have become a product label reader and have become a much more discriminating shopper. If the label does not tell me where the ingredients come from, I will not buy it. All shoppers should do the same. This is the only way, by refusing to buy food or products not properly labeled, the food and toy companies will be forced to change their ways. Production of safe products should be their goal. If we, as consumers, refuse to buy their unsafe products, they will be forced to change their ways.

A big thank you to Ms. Hoeller for this book; it may change the purchasing practices of our country!

If you want to understand the issues behind all the news surrounding food and toy recalls, read this book. It is not a long read, it is easy to understand, and even frightening. The book contains the information needed to make better choices selecting food. It has made me much more aware of what a food label does and doesn't say. Finally, the book is forthright and honest about what kind of action consumers should demand of their government in order to protect American consumers from both tainted imports and issues that originate right here in the US. The source references at the end of the book are worth the price by themselves.

This book is a quick read that touches on some very important issues facing our safety. It does not pretend to address every issue in extreme detail, but manages to give clear and compelling information that every American needs to be aware of. Ms. Hoeller is an expert on the subject matter. Although she openly admits to presenting her point of view, she gives insight into the ways to manage risks, even if you don't agree with all her remedies. This should be required reading on at minimum the high school level.Recall: Food &Toy Safety: An American Crisis

This is the book to buy before you do your holiday shopping.
Mom's & Dad's, protect your family, read the labels when you shop. Susie Hoellers book tells all. . .

I found the information in this book very interesting. It is packed full of information that kept me turning the pages - I finished this book in a little over a day and am still processing the information. There is information in here that I had never heard and I followed the recall very closely.

I think that all animal owners owe it to themselves to read this book just to see how loose the pet food industry was/is. Pretty appalling stuff.

I went to school for international business and found the material regarding the China/USA import/export very interesting and think everyone can take something away from this book.

Marion Nestle presents an insightful, disturbing analysis of the recent contamination of many popular brands of pet food by melamine, an industrial waste chemical. She prints a list of affected brands at the back of the book and I was horrified to discover that the "high quality" mail order food I was feeding two of my dogs was on the list (although I have not had any problems). Even more disturbingly, she discusses how the globalization of food distribution has put not just pet food but human food at risk. Just after I finished reading this book, reports of melamine-laced milk products sickening thousands of babies in China appeared in the major news outlets. Everyone, not just pet owners, should read this book!

This short book provides a competent overview of the China melamine pet food scare of two years ago. As a dog owner who lived through it and searched for updates on what was safe and what wasn't, I was very interested in Nestle's investigation and findings after the fact. While I was reading it, the news broke about the same kind of poisoning in baby formula in China. Had I not seen that, I might have believed that once the perpetrator of the pet food poisoning was executed!! the poisoning would stop, but no. As Nestle expertly explains, despite the lack of safely involved with worldwide food production, the United States is woefully short of regulatory and safety inspectors for these products as they come into the country and are combined with other ingredients and then distributed to companies who make food of all kinds and specifically pet food. Maybe, pet food companies will take more care in their formulations, however, all pet owners should take the time to investigate the manufacturer of the food they use and pay extra for the better brands of pet food. Nestle lists the brands that had to be recalled for both cat and dog food in the back of her book.

This book is a page-turner - and not just because it shows all the twists and turns that went on behind the scenes in the pet food recall. It is an eye-opener about the lack of government oversight or pet food company responsibility for what goes into pet food or how it is made. Just as the title makes clear, this is not a book about pet food manufacture and ingredients - that is the book the author was working on when the pet food recall happened. THAT book is forthcoming. This book is exactly what the title says: it's about the politics of pet food manufacture and sales and how our chihuahuas have been the sentinels as a wake-up call that our human food industry is no better. The author is neutral and balanced and generously gives benefit-of-the-doubt to the various players in this dangerous food drama, a fiasco that still haunts many of us with dogs and cats. Nestle's lack of judgmentalism is actually great because it allows you as the reader to discover how it all worked and bring your own moral indignation to the table, as it were. This book is like following a detective looking for an explanation of the economic,business, political and social elements that conspired to bring about a horrible Perfect Storm of tainted food. I was absolutely riveted by the meticulous research that went into unraveling the mystery and uncovering the obfuscation by many of the participants. As the author of "The Dog Bible" I can attest how hard some information is to come by, especially in nutrition, so I was so impressed by this book that I invited the author, Marion Nestle, onto my live NPR radio show DOG TALK on September 27th. You can sign up for the free podcast or listen live online and decide for yourselves. I say she's done a brilliant job and given us a really significant heads-up for ourselves as well as our pets. I will wager that you'll click on "buy now" once you've heard her talk.

Marion Nestle's book "Pet Food Politics" is about the pet food recall of 2007. For those of you who don't remember, there was a massive recall of pet food last summer. The recall began with cat food manufactured by Menu Foods (but sold under many other brand names including Iams, Nutro, and Hill's), but expanded into a large number of cat and dog foods under many different brand names. It became clear after the recall that the problem occurred because an unscrupulous Chinese supplier sold a mixture of wheat flour, cyanuric acid, and melamine as wheat gluten. As a pet owner, the recall inconvenienced me (I had to change my cats' foods). As a parent, I became greatly concerned about what I was feeding my daughter and began seriously looking at where the food I bought was produced. I bought this book because I wanted to better understand what happened.

I knew the basic story here, but did not know about the total number of pets who died (likely in the thousands), the reasons why melamine was substituted for the wheat gluten (cheap melamine looks like expensive protein when tested using standard industrial tests), nor what happened to the contaminated pet food (it was fed to livestock and made it into the human food chain).

This book is a fast read and is clear, well written, and very interesting. Unfortunately, it is too brief. I wish that Ms. Nestle had taken this opportunity to explain more about the pet food industry: its history, the major players, the processes used to make pet food. The story is fascinating, but it feels more like a New Yorker article than a book.

I would recommend this book to someone who was interested in the pet food recalls, though I think that most readers should start with other books about food production. Specifically, I would recommend Michael Pollan's excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals or Marion Nestle's own What to Eat before reading this book, to get a feel for how food is produced and to understand some of the politics involved.

Although I second the other revierw here, I must add that this book could be some 100 pages shorter and still hit the mark. The way it is, Lambrecht uses too much words to deliver his message.
Also, because of the subject matter itself, the book is a bit outdated.
Other than that, good reading material.

I was a little wary when purchasing this book that the entire premise would be zealotish anti-GMO and anti-biotechnology. The quotes on the cover seemed to indicate that would also be the case. I was extremely pleased to find a very balanced reporting of both sides of the genetic engineering debate. The author has been a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for over 2 decades, and has been covering the debate and progress since its inception. His style is engaging and fast-paced, with humor and human interest sprinkled in to lighten a complex topic. He seems to lean toward the side of caution, but gives full reporting to the biotech companies' claims and biotech's proponents' enthusiasm. I personally am hopeful of the promise and potential of this technology, but this book helped me understand opponents' fears in a very sympathetic way. Particularly frightening was the disclosure of some of the big biotech firms' less-than-open trials and political influences. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the issues involved in genetically engineering our food.

If you are curious about what you are eating this is a necessary book for you. Bill Lambrecht provides an unbiased resource for those intrested in the history of GMO food. Lambrecht gives the opinions of scientists, politicians and the farmers that grow these crops. This provides a balenced collage of information that allows anyone to make up their own mind about what the future of food should be.

This book was very enlightening in the subject of GMO's, as they are a powerful new technology with frightening implications. Lambrecht uses entertaining anecdotes and accounts of his dealings with ordinarys farmer and head agricultural powerfigures. I recommend this book because it tried to show an objective perspective on the entire issue, and left no voice unheard.

I am using your textbook for a class I teach for the Oklahoma City/County Health Department. I Love It! The class I teach is the Food Service Operator's Certification Course that is required by all food service operators in this county. I am a Registered Dietitian who is contracted by Oklahoma State University-OKC and Francis Tuttle to teach the class for the health department. It is kind of a community service offered by the two schools. I have only been teaching the class for three years now, and by far your book is the best.

Your book has made my job so easy and so much fun! Some of my students are returning to do the re-certification class and bringing managers in who have not taken the class in 20 years. In the past, they have just challenged the test every three years, because they thought the class was too boring. (and they knew it all).
I would highly recommend this book to educators in the nutrition field. I think all nutrition majors need to know this important information. I also recommend it for a reference for my food service managers in my nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

As an instructor who teaches Food Safety classes to front-line employees, I find this text an excellent resource. It is comprehensive yet still easy-to-understand, a difficult combination to achieve for some of the technical aspects of foodborne illness, pathogens, etc. The cartoon-style drawings add to the enjoyment. I have had many trainees who share these positive comments. Only negative comment would be to include color photos instead of the old, grainy B&W.

Also recommended for the Food Safety Trainer: "Keyword Index: 1999 FDA Model Food Code"

Essentials of Food Safety & Sanitation is a comprehensive, easy-to-understand guide to help food workers produce safe food. In my job as editor of a food safety-oriented newsletter, I review and have access to a lot of training materials, but "Essentials" is the one I refer to the most for current, reliable information.

I wanted to make your users aware of the fact that a Study Guide has been developed to accompany Essentials of Food Safety and Sanitation. There are a growing number of states in America that require retail food managers in their state to be certified in food safety. In many instances, certification is based on the ability to pass a nationally recognized food protection manager certification examination. Many people who are seeking certification desire to have some training in food safety before sitting for the certification exam. However, these people do not always live in areas where such training is readily available. This is why the authors of Essentials of Food Safety and Sanitation developed the Study Guide to accompany the book. The Study Guide is published by Prentice Hall, and its ISBN is 0-13-532144-1.

This book is a great introduction to food safety. It is accessible to a person who knows little about food safety without "dumbing it down." The book contains many credible epidemologial studies and warns the danger of food-borne diseases.

But the biggest strength of this book is the author's ability to translate all the information into practical and actionable advice. The book contains a series of checklists that you can photocopy and stick it in your kitchen.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about food safety.

A book that describes how that which sustains you may also maim you. Light reading? Hardly, but it is also not a bad or difficult read. Dr. Satin's prose and ability to address sensitive topics without bludgeoning the reader makes this book enjoyable indeed. It would be easy to assume that food borne pathogens and the illness that they cause is the other guy's problem. Dr. Satin shines a bright light on food handling and shows that we can all improve. He exposes the reader to the best that science has to offer to help us avoid illness. He repeatedly shows food irradiation to be a valuable tool that the alarmists in the food activists groups have unfairly maligned. As food irradiation becomes more available in the local grocery and restaurant, it is my hope that rational voices like Dr. Satin's carry the day.

Proof of Dr. Satin's wit shows through while debunking myths and passing on advice.
-If anybody insists that a little dirt is good for you, take them out to the garden and have them swallow a thimbleful of the stuff.
-When you are finally sure you can eat off the floor, make sure you do not!

If you can stand to take a critical eye at your own food prep and local restaurant, this book will help you avoid the dangers in your food. Protect your children, pregnant and elderly with the ideas you will garner from this text.

Food Alert is a must for every kitchen. And should be placed right next to our cookbooks to remind us of the dangers of infected food.

During the last days in 1992, at the height of the Christmas season, several people on the west coast began to succumb to a lethal food-borne infection. Most of the unfortunate victims were children who had eaten hamburgers at a Jack in the Box restaurant. Toddlers who came in contact with the children who had eaten the burgers were also infected. It infected over 700 people in Washington, Idaho, California, Nevada. The really heartbreaking part of this whole mess was that several of the youngest victims died an unusually cruel and agonizing death, and a lot of those that lived have had to have repeated intestinal surgery and extended kidney dialysis, many will be infected for the rest of their lives. Food borne illnesses can happen at home also, and can be just as fatal and that is why this book is so important to have in our kitchens. More than 600 food borne diseases are known about today. Food alert provides everything that we need to know to protect our families

1) Learn about the 20 most causes of food contamination in your kitchen. 2) What steps you can take to lower the risk of food borne illness. 3) The causes of food borne disease. 4) How to avoid buying, handling, or eating contaminated food. 5) How to tell if you might be suffering from a food borne illness.

A very informative book that will open our eyes about what we are preparing and feeding our families and ourselves. This is an excellent book to have in our kitchens. Get informed now.

This is an excellent book! Satin really seems to empathise with readers because he is able to explain very complicated medical and technical jargon in a way that anyone can easily understand. Not only is it a 'Who's Who' of all the causes of food poisoning, but it also a manual on how to avoid the experience. Although the book is crammed with an unbelievable amount of information on all the food-borne diseases and how to avoid them, it is an easy book to negotiate through. There is an excellent index, glossary and in particular the appendices on disease symptoms and food storage make this one of the most practical and convenient books I ever read. The book is a bit frightening because, despite the author's sense of humour, the book tells it all - the food poisoning problems in the home, in restaurants and fast food places, in school cafeterias, even on cruise ships, picnics and barbecues. Satin really gets into what goes on in the food industry. I was particularly concerned with some of the terrible long-term consequences of food poisoning. This really yanked the subject away from the typical image we have of food poisoning as being simply diarrhoea or an upset stomach. The book also talks about the added dangers of food poisoning for young kids, pregnant women, senior citizens and people who have AIDS. Satin always refers to actual recorded cases, which brings the matter much closer to home, because you can see how easy it is for anyone in your family to get food poisoning. Unless you know what you are doing, eating is like playing roulette. This book will definitely improve your chances of avoiding food poisoning. A good knowledge of food poisoning is a must these days. That's why I highly recommend this book as a 'must' read.

Bountiful Harvest: Technology, Food, Safety, And The Environment by Thomas R. DeGregori (Professor of Economics, University of Houston) is a thoroughly "reader friendly" introduction and analysis of how modern technology has drastically affected our environmentally based, technology enhanced food supply. Exposing myths and presenting extensive, meticulous research on the history of pesticides, pollution, organic agriculture, and much more, Bountiful Harvest is a very highly recommended, fact-filled primer, which will provide the non-specialist general reader an invaluable instructional background with respect to what really is served up on the dinner plate.

Thomas R. DeGregori knows his food technology. A professor of economics at the University of Houston, DeGregori has written an excellent defence of modern agriculture and biotechnology.

I would recommend this book as an antidote to the frightening biotechnology-gone-mad scenarios painted by organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

This book is a welcome addition to the biotechnology debate.

Radical environmentalists and nature-first types beware! Dr. Tom DeGregori dares to controvert your bluster, and has the courage not to "think small." DeGregori, a Professor of Economics at the University of Houston Central Campus, has long played the "Devil's Advocate" to Barry Commoner's "Runaway Technology Thesis." For a minimum of thirty years, he has steadily proffered logical counterpropositions to the knee-jerk anti-science of modern ecological Luddites.

In his wonderful new book, aptly entitled BOUNTIFUL HARVEST: TECHNOLOGY, FOOD SAFETY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT, DeGregori carefully integrates human evolution, reason, art, writing, and manufacture as the prerequisites and components of technology. As he has done elsewhere, DeGregori once again promotes the humanity of technology, which is both a phenomenon and process, in defiance of those who would spurn it as a materialistic vice. Early on, he declares that without technology, we pitiful humans would have had to adapt to our environments "by the much slower adaptive process known as speciation [the evolution of different species]." Technology, which is unique to the human species, saved us eons of evolution and gave us to ability to maneuver and develop throughout the world.

DeGregori reminds us that anti-technology evolved "with, and probably before, Plato," who argued that with the creation of the alphabet (and writing), the young would be urged not to rely on their own memory. This in turn founded a viewpoint that we, as humans, somehow "lose something" with every technological advance. He unmasks the insanity (and inanity) of such sophistry in his chapters on food safety, where he cleverly refutes the would-be superiority of "organic foods." Indeed, we created artificial substances to fend off the very toxicities and incapacities, which organic farming reintroduces. The author boldly asserts that a return to purely organic farming might feed one-fifth of the current world population, involving farm output losses of 53 to 100 percent. Moreover, organic fertilizers often are accompanied by graveolent diseases that have been long since stymied, or eliminated, by technological countermeasures. DeGregori is best when he scoffs at the "whole foods" fad, which encourages well-to-do (and well-fed) customers to buy potentially fecally contaminated foods at a 57 percent mark-up!

The fact is that human beings never have, and never will, live in "harmony" with nature because "by nature" humans must transform or, at the very least, disturb environments to make the regions habitable. Without technology, our physically inferior species could only survive in tropical or, at best, subtropical environments. Even the simplest of farmsteads, say, a swidden plot, at least temporarily clears natural vegetation to make way for crop cultivation. The fact is that it is only through the implementation of suitable technologies that humans can minimize the disturbance and the dangers to themselves and their environments.

As Dr. DeGregori has reminded us for decades: never before have so many of us lived such long and such relatively healthy lives. The shortest lived and least healthy among us, as in Africa South of the Sahara, are comparatively miserable precisely because they do not have the technology to meet their needs. It is the ultimate irony that the anti-technologists, who oppose irradiated, genetically altered, and biotechnological foods, are harming the very people--whom they blatantly otherwise claim to defend--who most need the potential bounty of that advanced nutrition. Already bypassed by the Green Revolution, Africans can ill afford to miss the coming revolution in food technology.

Always stimulating and controversial, Dr. DeGregori once again takes up the cross of sensibility against those who make the headlines and only occasionally make sense. BOUNTIFUL HARVEST should be read by economists, geographers, anthropologists, ecologists, and any and all who value their fellow human beings and their environment. Highest rating*****!

I never realized how seriously I could be negatively impacting my health just by the way I handled my food. I've read through the book twice, and have since donated it to the bookshelves at the AIDS Support Network of San Luis Obispo County, CA. This book really should be given to each and every HIV-Positive person at no charge by their respective ASO's. Little things can truly have a great impact on our health.

This excellent guide is recipient of the Reviewer's Choice award and is well deserving of it. It details all aspects of nutrition and food safety and shows food is a great tool of preventive medicine in promoting healing of common AIDS-related illness.

This book is concise but at the same time very explanatory, clearly breaking down the process of community organizing into its essential elements, at least according to the author's perspective. The book was written a while ago, but the issues are still very relevant. I'm very new to reading about CO, but just reading the book got me very excited about the possibility for real change. I highly recommend it to other interested in entering the field.

Many churches and synagogues, when faced with a needy situation in their neighborhoods, are paralyzed or indecisive. Should they provide for the needy while ignoring the root cause of the distress? Should they urge their members to pursue political correctives through the ballot box? Should the institution involve itself in partisan politics?

None of these approaches is the best way, according to Gregory Pierce. If they are truly to have an impact on their social milieu, congegations must involve themselves in broadly-based community organizations large and powerful enough to confront underlying causes of need. This tried and proven method was developed forty years go by Saul Alinsky and is still employed successfully today.

In order to be effective in community organizations, however, congregations must be willing to work with other groups with different ideologies, and they must understand and be willing to utilize the levers of power. This book is a primer for lay leaders and clergy who want to move their congregations into the arena of activism. It tells them what to do -- and what not to do -- if they want to make a difference in their neighborhoods.

Genetic engineering "is probably the largest nutritional experiment the world has ever seen, and we are the guinea pigs" say Laura and Robin Ticciati in their book, Genetically Engineered Foods: Are They Safe? You Decide. They answer with a resounding "No!" to the question of whether genetically engineered foods are safe.

The Ticciatis briefly define genes and DNA, then explain how genetic engineers insert the genes from one organism into another. Genes from flounders, for example, have been inserted in tomato DNA to produce a tomato that has a longer growing season. They maintain that genetic engineering breaks natural crossbreeding rules because species are combined that would never mate in Nature.

Their primary concern lies in the lack of knowlege of the long-term effects from eating genetically engineered foods. They are especially concerned about children. At the least, they want genetically engineered foods to be labeled so that consumers know what they are buying and eating.

The authors say that "Right now, it is estimated that 60-70 percent of the foods in our stores contain genetically engineered components" with 100-150 more expected to be added by the year 2000. "These foods have not been subjected to thorough pre-market safety testing, nor are they labeled."

Genetically Engineered Foods: Are They Safe? You Decide is must reading for consumers who want to know about the ramifications of modifying foods by artificial gene transfer.

Food technology has turned much of what we eat in this country into artificial, processed, chemicalized mishmash. No wonder forty percent of the population is sick! Now comes the latest insult -- genetically engineered food. You won't know that you are eating it because the government doesn't require food manufacturers/producers to specially label GE food nor does it require any independent safety testing. What you are increasingly eating, as this book shockingly reveals, is unnatural food with the potential to create who-knows-what-damage to your health and the environment. This is a small, easy-to-read, and must-read book, about a huge, serious issue that affects all of us. Science is tampering with our food, and we, the consumers, are the unwitting guinea pigs in this mad experiment.