Reviewing the Law Reviews.

• Author: Youngdale, Elizabeth M.

Law Review Highlights:

Food safety concerns have grown over the last few years as salmonella outbreaks and other food-related illnesses have increasingly made the news. Two recent symposia--one on food policy and one on food regulation--have addressed some of the legal issues of current U.S. food production and acquisition. Three of the related articles are discussed below.

In his article On (Cr)edibility: Why Food in the United States May Never Be Safe, Denis W. Steams examines how the regulation of the food industry interacts with a "free" marketplace in the U.S. (1) The author argues that a true free market is not possible where food needs to be safe for consumption. Regulations, on the other hand, may not do much better in producing safe food, especially where they have the effect of limiting competition. The author then proposes four suggestions for regulating food in a way that will create a market that is free in a meaningful sense, but will still result in safe food. Those four suggestions are: (1) increase visibility; decrease irresponsibility, (2) increase accountability; decrease externalities, (3) increase reliability; decrease fraud, and (4) increase traceability; decrease anonymity.

A second article from the same Food Policy Symposium above considers the effect Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) legislation and regulations have on food safety. In An Examination of Whether U.S. Country of Origin Labeling Legislation Plays a Role in Protecting Consumers from Contaminated Food, Wendy A. Johnecheck looks at how the COOL regulatory regime might be used for reasons beyond their intended purposes. (2) Though the U.S. government has stated that COOL is not meant to be a food safety measure, many consumers would like to use the information about where food come from for just that purpose, when making buying decisions. In addition to providing an overview of the primary legislation and regulatory regime, the article evaluates how COOL might be used to protect consumers from bad food products.

For the second symposium, The Future of Food Regulation, Sandra Hoffman and William Harder looked at food safety in the context of global trade in Food Safety and Risk Governance in Globalized Markets. (3) Their article provides an overview of existing food safety problems as well as discussing the ways global governments are responding in order to minimize the risk to consumers. Finally, the authors examine food safety reforms being implemented on both the national and regional level and how those reforms are being shaped by the larger global framework.

The following list is a selective bibliography of current law review literature thought to be of interest to civil defense counsel.

U.S. and International

Damages

Michel F. Baumeister and Dorothea M. Capone, Recent Developments in Regional Air Carrier Litigation and the Carriers' Exposure to Punitive Damages Under Supreme Court Precedent, 75 J. AIR L. & COM. 323 (2010).

Danica Curavic, Note, Compensating Victims of Terrorism or Frustrating Cultural Diplomacy? The Unintended

Consequences of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act's Terrorism Provisions, 43 CORNELL INT'L L.J. 381 (2010).

Christine Piette Durrance, Noneconomic Damage Caps and Medical Malpractice Claim Frequency: A Policy Endogeneity Approach, 26 J.L. ECON. & ORG. 569 (2010).

Solene Rowan, Reflections on the Introduction of Punitive Damages for Breach of Contract, 30 OXFORD J. LEGAL STUD. 495 (2010).

Jillian T. Stein, Comment, Backdoor Eugenics: The Troubling Implications of Certain Damages Awards in Wrongful Birth...