Editor’s note: This story is the last in a series examining the new initiatives Iowa State has begun to enhance the quality of research in the university. Today’s story focuses on the Food Safety and Food Security Initiative.

Tracking food from the farm to the dining room table might sound like a tasking process, but the Food Safety and Food Security Initiative wants to do just that.

The initiative strives to both educate consumers about food issues and develop research programs to handle the myriad problems and functions associated with food – from globalization to food-borne infectious diseases.

“There are 76 million cases of food poisoning in the United States each year,” said Dan Henroid, food safety extension specialist. “There are 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths.”

Centralization is key for consolidating research, Henroid said. Right now, he said, food safety and food safety related research is going on across the university.

“Veterinary medicine, liberal arts and sciences, family and consumer sciences and agriculture all do millions of dollars worth of research,” Henroid said.

Catherine Woteki, dean of the college of agriculture and interim director of the food safety initiative, said about 70 faculty members at the university are involved in food safety research. The initiative will help to fund the Food Safety Institute, which will bring together research from across the university.

One of the ways initiative funds will help educate consumers is through the launch of a new Web site devoted to food safety questions. The site, www.foodsafetyanswers.org, has its official launch in a “couple of weeks,” Henroid said.

Questions on the site range from how salmonella affects eggs and whether irradiated meat is properly labeled.

Woteki said other aspects of the initiative include studying the effectiveness of regulation, rapid diagnostic capability for crop, livestock and human disease outbreaks and national security.

“We’ll study the social and economic aspects of food safety, such as cost-effectiveness and regulatory intervention strategies,” she said.

A permanent director for the Food Safety institute will be hired in six to nine months, Woteki said.

“Food safety and food security have taken on a while new significance nationwide,” said John McCarroll, director of University Relations. “We have a lot of expertise on campus is this area, and it will pay dividends for all of us.”

Also, on Thursday, the Board of Regents approved a sixth initiative, which would create a Center for Integrated Animal Genomics at Iowa State.

For more information on food safety, go to www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/.