Feeding the Future

September is National Food Safety Education Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness about safe practices that prevent foodborne illness.  Just as we can think of the many complexities of food policies and peripheral food concerns, we are fortunate enough to have career heroes to learn from.  This video allows us to learn from one such hero.

In this interview, Dr. Darin Detwiler speaks with Caroline Smith DeWaal - longtime CSPI leader, former FDA official, and now Deputy Director of EatSafe at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). We discuss her career from U.S. consumer protection and the passage of FSMA (driven by affected families’ voices) to international standards and practice. She highlights Codex Alimentarius as a consensus engine for modern, global food rules, and underscores that safe food is foundational to nutrition, trade, and development.

At GAIN, her EatSafe work tests how consumer demand can raise food safety in low- and middle-income countries by improving traditional markets, using culturally grounded training, “safe food” stands/branding, and local partnerships in places like Nigeria and Ethiopia. Core lessons: prevention over reaction, align with global standards, design for low-literacy realities, and know your stakeholders. Her advice to future practitioners: pick a mission you’ll sustain over decades, because persistence, negotiation, and empathy move policy as much as science.

Watch now: “Leading Global Voices: Caroline Smith DeWaal - Feeding the Future” [56:29]

#FoodSafetyMonth #FoodSafetyCulture #FoodSafety #FoodSecurity #FDA #Alliances #NGOs