Over the last few weeks, Food Safety News has received numerous inquiries related to our “Contributed Articles” section.  This section is dedicated to featuring articles and opinion pieces written by authors from a wide variety of disciplines who are not on staff at Food Safety News.  

While not all of the articles published in this section are traditional “Opinion” pieces, some certainly are.  Because this may have been unclear to some, Food Safety News is putting a new label on this section.  It is now called “Opinion & Contributed Articles.”

We are making the change to make it clear that Opinion pieces presented here reflect strictly the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Food Safety News staff or publisher.

Because people are passionate about a variety of food safety topics–from sustainability to traceability, and from raw milk to GMOs–we will continue to insist that contributing writers and readers who offer comments keep their discourse civil.    We will not tolerate this forum eroding into a chorus slinging personal insults.   

Our policy, which we don’t want to change, is to approve comments so long as they are readable and not spam.  

Keeping it civil really has not been much of a problem because the food safety community is used to keeping the debate on a high note.  

But on occasion, we’ve drawn comments from people who don’t respect this level of discourse nor do they understand that the purpose of this section is to provide a forum for voices not connected to Food Safety News.

Hopefully, this change will make things more clear.  We do not want to get into the business of editing, deleting, or denying comments.  But we will if we have to.

If you think an author missed the mark or have a conflicting viewpoint and would like to write an opposing Opinion piece for publication in Food Safety News, please contact us at info@foodsafetynews.com.