This research guide is intended to provide recommendations and resources for FSC 178. The guide follows this general structure:
Overview & Background Information: Get a sense of your topic, including general issues and news and related current events
Government Websites: Begin to narrow your search to the agencies that oversee food law, policy, and regulations, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Also included are state and local government websites.
Laws and Regulations: Use these resources to find specific codes and regulations
Journal Articles: Suggestions for finding scholarly research articles around food safety, food policy, and regulations
See the tabs above for some additional helpful information in navigating and searching food law and regulations.
Can't find what you're looking for? Please contact me at kkoziar@csufresno.edu.
AHFSS: Animal Health and Food Safety Service
APHIS: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (a division of the USDA)
CDFA: California Department of Food and Agriculture
CSPI: Center for Science in the Public Interest
EPA: Environmental Protection Agency
FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization
FDA: Food and Drug Administration
FNIC: Food and Nutrition Information Center (a resource in the National Agricultural Library, a division of the USDA)
FSIS: Food Safety Inspection Service (a division of the USDA)
FSPCA: Food Safety Preventative Controls Alliance
NCSL: National Conference of State Legislatures
NRDC: National Resource Defense Council
USDA: United States Department of Agriculture
WHO: World Health Organization
CCR: Code of California Regulations
CFR/e-CFR: Code of Federal Regulations/Electronic Code of Federal Regulations
CRS: Congressional Research Service
FSMA: Food Safety Modernization Act
FSTA: Food Science and Technology Abstracts, a database of food science-related articles
GAP: Good Agricultural Practices
GMP/CGMP: Good Manufacturing Practices/Current Good Manufacturing Practices
GRAS: Generally Recognized as Safe
HACCP: Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point
PCQI: Preventative Controls Qualified Individual
Tips for Searching Google and Google Scholar:
Limit Google searches to government websites by adding site:.gov to the end of your search terms to search for websites using the .gov (government) domain. For example, sucralose additive site:.gov will search only government websites for the terms sucralose additive
This will also work in search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo.
Finding full-text through Google Scholar
1. Click on the Find it @ Fresno State option, and you will be directed to OneSearch for full-text options.
2. If Find It @ Fresno State doesn't appear, select the option More or >> under the article/item citation
A. Search for your journal title in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory to see if it is scholarly/academic and refereed (peer-reviewed).
B. Use the Scholarly/Academic Journals limit within many databases
Most article databases allow you to limit your results to only scholarly/academic journals.
⇒ Use other methods to verify if some results seem wrong: this method does not always work well.
C. Check the journal's website
Search for the journals website. It will describe the purpose of the journal.
Look in the About This Journal section, or in the Instructions to Authors to see if the .journal is peer-reviewed,
Even if you have determined that the journal in which an article was published is scholarly, these journals usually also contain other types of articles such as editorials, commentary, review articles, book reviews, and news.
A. Clues you might find in the abstract include words such as:
study, results, methods/methodology, data, experimental, field trial
B. Look at the format of the article. Does it follow the typical format? (see previous tab)