By Rita Kaiser
Reference Services Librarian
King County Law Library

This month we are looking at Internet sites for researching food law. Food law can cover so much -- from packaging and labeling, to accepted additives, to food safety, to marketing, to organic food, to import and export. Where do you want to start?

This is a large area of the law and the agencies involved in regulating the food industry start at the local and state levels and go to the federal and international levels. However, we have to start somewhere, so I decided to work my way from local to international and focus on Food Safety.

So, let’s start at the Seattle--King County Public Health web site at http://metrokc.gov/health/ index.htm. Scroll down the page and you will find a listing of subjects for the web site. Choose Food Safety and link to the Food Protection Program where you can find information on mad cow disease and links to Chapter 246-215 of the Washington Administrative Code, which provides the safety standards for food served or sold to the public in Washington State.

In addition, this site has the inspection reporting system for King County food establishments, food worker permit and class schedules and links to the King County Board of Health Code, plus information for people wanting to start their own food-related businesses. It is a good starting point.

Then move on to the Washington State Department of Agriculture: http://agr.wa.gov/. Here you might want to start by looking at the Laws and Rules link on the left side of the page, as it will take you to the laws by RCW and WAC number or by the name of the act or rule. Otherwise, you may want to start by choosing the link for Food & Animals. You can then look at food processors, dairy, organic food, eggs and more. Under each of these areas, you will find the laws and regulations specific to the particular area, plus guides, licensing information and more.

If you go back to the home page for the department, you can choose the News link and sign up for email notification of WSDA news releases or simply browse the archives from 2001 to the present. Links and Resources will take you directly to Washington Agricultural Commodity Commissions, Washington Agricultural Organizations or directly to U.S. Government web sites such as those for the Food Safety Inspection Service of the Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN).

The Food Safety Inspection Service web site is http://www.fsis.usda.gov/. Here you will find educational materials, regulations, directives and policies on food safety, and links to state and federal inspection programs. In addition, there are links to international affairs, including import and export information.

The Regulations and Policies link allows you to choose to subscribe to an email notification service. You can also find FSIS Recalls, both open and closed federal cases and retail recalls. The link titled Science leads you to Laboratories and Procedures, Data Collection and Reports, Risk Assessments and the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points System (HACCP). This web site is also easy to navigate with clear headings and the ability to browse to what you need without doing a search through the whole site.

The CFSAN web site is http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/ list.html. While you cannot navigate this site as easily as the FSIS web site, it does contain some valuable information. It includes links to the www.FoodSafety. gov web site, program areas such as packaging and labeling, inspections and compliance, imports and exports and more. This site is strictly utilitarian, but includes the necessary materials. The FoodSafety.gov site will then link you to more information including international organizations such as the World Health Organization’s Food Safety Program, the World Trade Organization and a number of other countries’ food safety web sites.

An interesting international site, the WHO Food Safety Programme at http://www.who.int/foodsafety/en/ includes the WHO Study Report, with its focus on modern food biotechnology and its effects and possible effects on human health development and food security. This web site includes links to microbiological and chemical risks, food-borne disease, food standards and more. The web site is clean and easy to navigate. It includes links to some of the WHO conferences and reports that used to be almost impossible to locate. Definitely a site you want to explore.