Introduction
An ethical expert in the profession of a food safety inspector must have supervisory responsibility for food safety to meet consumer demand, improve product quality, and protect the health of citizens. Food safety inspectors are professionals with ethical standards that dictate respect for consumers and the need to adhere strictly to developed quality standards. A food safety inspector must ethically act in the best interests of consumers, be an objective expert, comply with local and federal laws, and be qualified to perform the job. To reinforce the requirements for full ethical responsibility for consumers’ health, a separate code for the food safety inspector profession must be developed.
Description of the Food Safety Expert Profession
A food safety expert is a qualified professional who requires considerable education. According to Bayles (1989), a profession involves extensive training, such as earning a bachelor’s degree after college. This definition is true for the profession of a food safety expert, since it involves long-term training to master all the necessary skills.
Bayles (1989) also mentions a second criterion: the profession implies a significant involvement of intellectual labor. This position is also true for the profession in question, since analytics, research, and reasoning are integral to it. According to Bayles (1989), providing an important public service is the most important professional component. For the profession in question, ensuring safe consumption is the main goal, which undoubtedly brings social benefits. Thus, according to Bayles’s three criteria, a food safety inspector is a profession.
The Code of Ethics for Food Safety Inspectors
Current Principles
Since food safety inspectors have been proven to be a profession, a code of ethics should apply to this area to guide any action. The code of ethics for a food safety inspector can be considered the provisions of the Food Code, developed for the industry by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Chapter 2 of this code describes the profession’s ethical responsibilities in subparagraphs 2.2-2.4 (FDA, 2022).
Firstly, a professional must be accredited to perform the work accurately. The inspector must be aware of the dangers of foodborne diseases and educate others about this issue. The professional must act as a regulatory body to minimize all the risks in the food industry. To promote consumer protection, the professional must monitor production conditions, product quality, and legal compliance (FDA, 2022). Thus, the ethics of a food safety inspector imply responsibility to the consumer and guarantee the promotion of the prevention of unsafe products, based on risk management.
The FDA code does not fully comply with the ethical understanding of the food safety inspector profession. Concentrating on the ethical duty of conformity to standards, the code does not mention other important aspects of the profession. Further thinking and derivation of clear standards are necessary for a more detailed understanding of ethics in this professional area.
Firstly, the food safety inspector is seen as the ethical confidant of the consumer (Barnes et al., 2022). Ethical responsibilities should include the transparency and effectiveness of methods for providing consumers with quality products (Barnes et al., 2022).
In terms of deontological ethics, food safety inspection is part of the justice process (Barnes et al., 2022). Consumers have the right to be protected from dangerous products. In contrast, the safety expert has a duty to uphold this right. Thus, the code presented by the FDA is not fully the basis for the formation of expertise in ethics.
Rational deference, trust, self-determination, and interpretive obedience are used to determine ethical responsibility. However, the FDA code does not address these concepts. Rational deference involves taking a position of power, which can be vulnerable for non-specialists (Hardwig, 1994). The code of ethics should address this phenomenon to prevent the abuse of expert power. Consumer trust is one of the most important ethical components to which expert attention should be directed (Hardwig, 1994).
Adequate self-determination based on professional skills allows one not to abuse expertise (Hardwig, 1994). The ethical issue of interpretive obedience is not addressed in the FDA code, as it implies the unquestioning rule of law (Davis, 2003). Thus, the general FDA code does not meet the goal of developing ethical expertise, which indicates the need to create a separate code that applies only to the food safety inspector profession.
Areas for Improvement
The need to develop a more detailed code of ethics for the profession of food safety inspector is justified by the lack of ethical recommendations for behavior when mentioning only duties and responsibilities. For example, a novice in this field will face the dilemma of the need to report unsafe products and the responsibility of suppressing foodborne diseases. The specialist will need to decide whether to rely on the principle of transparency or prevent information leakage and panic to maintain potential consumer confidence (Barnes et al., 2022).
The current FDA code does not guide the correct behavior in an ethically difficult situation. Compared to other socially responsible professions, a nurse can turn to an ethical code to resolve a difficult situation, unlike a food safety inspector, even though both jobs aim for health protection. Thus, the authorities should consider the purely regulatory nature of the current code of ethics and address the recommendation that a separate code should be created for food safety inspectors. The position that there are no full and comprehensive ethical recommendations for the food safety inspector profession at the moment can be criticized. It can be assumed that an understanding of what ethical principles are embedded in this area of professionalism should follow from a set of general recommendations and requirements.
From the above, it is concluded that the professional is obliged to act to benefit consumers, protect public health, and provide a state oversight function (FDA, 2022). Ethical principles are intuitive because they are derived from the awareness of the need for a responsible attitude towards consumers’ health. However, these provisions should not be intuitive; they should be clearly spelled out in order to form an accurate picture of behavior with a justification for the ethical responsibility of the parties.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the food safety inspector needs a separate code of ethics. At the moment, the ethical behavior of a professional in this field is regulated only by the FDA’s general code for food-related professions. This regulation may not be sufficient as it only provides a set of general recommendations and delineation of responsibility. An ethically guided food safety inspector must be responsible for the health of consumers, comply with prescribed standards, and not abuse their expert authority.
References
Barnes, J., Whiley, H., Ross, K., & Smith, J. (2022). Defining food safety inspection. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(2), 789-807. Web.
Bayles, M. D. (1981). Professional ethics. Wadsworth.
Davis, M. (2003). What can we learn by looking for the first code of professional ethics? Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 24(5), 433-454. Web.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (2022). Food code. Web.
Hardwig, J. (1994). Toward an ethics of expertise. In D.E. Wuste (ed.). Professional ethics and social responsibility (pp. 83-101). Rowman & Littlefield.