This week, student journalists from five universities participating in the Carnegie-Knight News 21 program published a major national investigation into food safety in America. The investigation is getting prominent play in The Washington Post and on MSNBC.com.

The series covers the dangers posed by seafood, how hundreds of millions of pounds of contaminated meat is approved for sale in the U.S and how foodborne illnesses sicken 48 million Americans per year, among other topics.

In its coverage, an article in The Washington Post says:

“A look at how the nation’s food safety system operates in the case of salmonella-infected poultry shows how a combination of industry practices and gaps in government oversight results in a fractured effort that leaves the ultimate responsibility for safe food with the consumer.”

News21, which promotes in-depth, interactive and innovative investigative journalism, is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Knight Foundation. It is headquartered at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Eric Newton, senior advisor to the president at Knight Foundation, says the investigation highlights the intrinsic value of the program:

“News21 proves that top journalism schools and top teachers can produce journalism as good as any in America today.  News leaders and major news organizations agree — because they use News21’s journalism.”

Twenty-seven News21 Fellows from Arizona State University, University of Maryland, University of Missouri, University of Nebraska and Harvard University collaborated to produce the investigation, which examines food safety issues through in-depth stories, photos, video, graphics and interactive data bases.

Knight recently renewed its commitment to News21.  The next generation of the program will be modeled after the past two year’s multi-university investigative projects and open to students from any accredited journalism school in the U.S.