Edited by
Copyright © 2015 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-1-118-27427-9
IEEE Press
445 Hoes Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08854
IEEE Press Editorial Board
Tariq Samad, Editor in Chief
| George W. Arnold | Vladimir Lumelsky | Linda Shafer |
| Dmitry Goldgof | Pui-In Mak | Zidong Wang |
| Ekram Hossain | Jeffrey Nanzer | MengChu Zhou |
| Mary Lanzerotti | Ray Perez | George Zobrist |
Kenneth Moore, Director of IEEE Book and Information Services (BIS)
“Like most humans, I am hungry … our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.”
—M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical Me
The IEEE Professional Communication Society (PCS), with Wiley-IEEE Press, continues its book series titled Professional Engineering Communication with this collection curated by Dr. David Wright. This book, Communication Practices in Engineering, Manufacturing, and Research for Food and Water Safety, brings together the thoughtful research and perspectives from professionals in different fields, all writing to the ways in which communication efforts affect the ways we think about food and water and the ways in which it arrives at our doorstep. The rhetorical frameworks that provide scaffolding for personal opinions, public policy, research and development, and advertising are intricate and fraught with human emotion (both good and bad). The power of these chapters is how the reach into the dialogue and deconstruct the communication's underpinnings.
From a larger perspective, this book is a welcome addition to the Professional Engineering Communication (PEC) book series, which has a mandate to explore areas of communication practices and application as applied to the engineering, technical, and scientific professions. Including the realms of business, governmental agencies, academia, and other areas, this series will develop perspectives about the state of communication issues and potential solutions when at all possible.
The books in the PEC series keep a steady eye on the applicable while acknowledging the contributions that analysis, research, and theory can provide to these efforts. Active synthesis between onsite realities and research will come together in the pages of this book as well as other books to come. There is a strong commitment from PCS, IEEE, and Wiley to produce a set of information and resources that can be carried directly into engineering firms, technology organizations, and academia alike.
At the core of engineering, science, and technical work is problem solving and discovery. These tasks require, at all levels, talented and agile communication practices. We need to effectively gather, vet, analyze, synthesize, control, and produce communication pieces in order for any meaningful work to get done. It is unfortunate that many technical professionals have been led to believe that they are not effective communicators, for this only fosters a culture that relegates professional communication practices as somehow secondary to other work. Indeed, I have found that many engineers and scientists are fantastic communicators because they are passionate about their work and their ideas. This series, planted firmly in the technical fields, aims to demystify communication strategies so that engineering, scientific, and technical advancements can happen more smoothly and with more predictable and positive results.
Traci Nathans-Kelly
This book is a collection of perspectives on both the history and the current state of food and water engineering. More specifically, it represents some of the many ways that our food and water quality are affected by communication.
Despite our many technological advances, contaminated food and water continue to take lives worldwide. We tend to think of these events as happening in some far away, underdeveloped portion of the world. While it is true that countries with poor infrastructure are subject to more incidences of contaminated food and water, we continue to suffer the same types of problems in the United States and Europe. One does not have to look far to find stories of lives being claimed by Escherichia coli in Washington State or outbreaks of food poisoning at the 2014 Food Safety Summit in Baltimore, Maryland.
Technology certainly helps to lessen the impact of those outbreaks, and to track outbreaks of foodborne illnesses to their source more quickly. Similarly, stories from the past serve as good reminders of previous failures. But technologies must be accepted by food producers and the public to be of value, and lessons from the past are continually mitigated by the need for profits and development. And in some cases, such as with genetically modified foods, the very technologies we have created spur new debates about food safety and ethics.
Therefore, communication continues to play a vital role within food production industries as we struggle to implement new technologies within industry while maintaining policies that protect consumers. We hope that this book will help readers better understand where we come from, where we are, and what is being done to improve food safety through communication.
David Wright
Becca Cammack has worked in the environmental and energy industries since graduating with her B.S. in Geology from Northern Arizona University in 2000. After spending five years working in various roles and disciplines in the consulting industry, she joined the southern California energy industry as an environmental professional specializing in water quality permissions and compliance. She presently works as Senior Environmental Scientist with Pacific Gas & Electric, Co., in northern California, where she supports project teams in their efforts to understand and comply with environmental permits and regulations. She has obtained a professional certificate in Technical & Scientific Writing and is completing coursework toward a Master of Arts degree in Rhetoric & Writing Studies, both from San Diego State University.
Roy E. Costa is Registered Sanitarian (RS) and President of Environmental Health Associates. He has more than 33 years of environmental health practice in the academic, government, and private sectors. Mr. Costa is a food safety consultant, educator, auditor, and expert with international experience. Mr. Costa is the author of recognized Internet food safety courses and classroom-training programs and numerous publications in the area of food safety.
Kathryn Cornell Dolan, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, Missouri, USA, where she teaches early US literature with a focus on food studies, globalization, and environmental criticism. Her book Beyond the Fruited Plain: Food and Agriculture in U.S. Literature, 1850–1905 is available through University of Nebraska Press.
William K. Hallman, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, and serves as the current Chair of the Risk Communication Advisory Committee of the US Food and Drug Administration. An expert in risk perception and risk communication, his research focuses on food safety, food security, and public perceptions of controversial issues concerning food, technology, health, and the environment.
Edward A. Malone, Ph.D., is Professor of Technical Communication at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, Missouri, USA. He has published articles in the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, and most recently Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.
Havva Malone (née Tezcan) has a Master of Science in Physics and is a part-time teacher in Rolla, Missouri, USA. She started the Rolla School District's first FLL team, Global Dreamers, and served as the team's coach. She is currently working on a book that communicates math concepts to primary and secondary students through photographs.
Mary L. Nucci, Ph.D., is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Her research focuses on the public perceptions and communication of science in media and informal education.
Elena Sperandio lives in Berlin, Germany. After completing degrees in German and Romance studies and traffic engineering at the Technische Universität, Berlin, and Freie Universität, Berlin, she cofounded 4-Text Global Translation & Localization Services, where she has since gathered more than a decade of experience in project management, translation memory systems, and quality assurance. She has detailed knowledge of the problems faced by large companies in their struggle to provide good, consistent technical documentation. In 2009, she became the CEO of 4-Text.
David Wright, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, Missouri, USA, where he codirects the technical communication program. He studies technology diffusion, technical communication history, and international issues related to agricultural development. He has published articles in Technical Communication Quarterly and Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.
This book has been a challenge on several fronts. At times I wondered if it would ever be completed. We tend to forget that life happens regardless of whether we have a project in the works. Special thanks goes to Traci-Nathans Kelly for helping to keep this project alive through those difficult times and for helping to make this series a reality. She has been an excellent guide for our team and an even keel throughout.
We also wish to thank Mary Hatcher, Kenneth Moore, and the entire team at Wiley-IEEE Press for their help in the publishing process.
Finally, on behalf of all of the authors, I thank the many family members and colleagues that invariably become laborers in the publishing process. We are grateful that our thanks are enough for them.