Consumer Knowledge and Behaviors Regarding Food Safety Risks Associated with Wheat Flour

Abstract

Consumers do not consider flour, a low-moisture food product, a high-risk for microbial contamination. In the past ten years, however, flour has been identified as a source of pathogenic bacteria, including Salmonella and E. coli . Online surveys were conducted to study consumers’ flour-handling practices and their knowledge about food safety risks related to flour. The survey also evaluated message impact on three food safety messages in communicating information and convincing consumers to adopt safe flour handling practices. Flour-using consumers (n = 1,045) from the United States reported they used flour to make cakes, cookies, and bread. Most consumers stored flour in sealed containers. Less than 1% kept a record of product identification numbers, like lot numbers, and less than 11% kept brand and use-by-date information. Many consumers (85%) were unaware of flour recalls, or outbreaks, and few (17%) believed they would be affected by flour recalls or outbreaks. If the recall affected the flour they bought, nearly half of the consumers (47%) would buy the same product from a different brand for a few months before they returned to the recalled brand. Among consumers who use flour to bake, 66% said they ate raw cookie dough or batter. Raw dough “eaters” were more difficult to convince to avoid eating and playing raw flour than “non-eaters.” Food safety messages were less impactful on those raw dough “eaters” than “non-eaters.” Compared with the food safety message with only recommendations, those messages with recommendations and an explanation as to the benefits of the practice were more effective in convincing consumers to change their practices. These findings provide insight into effective consumer education about safe flour-handling practices and could assist in the accurate development of risk assessment models related to flour handling.

Content analysis of food safety implications in online flour-handling recipes

“…Most consumers are not aware of the food safety risks associated with flour and rarely hear of food recalls or outbreaks associated with flour (Feng and Archila, 2020, Submitted). Consumers' awareness of egg-associated food safety risks may be heightened due to the prevalence of recalls and promotion of safe food-handling techniques through labels describing appropriate storage conditions and cooking instructions as mandated by 21 code of federal regulations 101.17(h) (Chen and Timmins, 2018; Li et al , 2017; U.S.…”

Food Handling Practices in the Era of COVID-19: A Mixed-Method Longitudinal Needs Assessment of Consumers in the United States

“…For each of the five months, survey respondents were recruited from an online consumer panel of Qualtrics XM, an external online survey company (23,65).…”

Consumption of High-Risk Foods in the Canadian Population, Foodbook Study, 2014 to 2015

“…The high-risk foods selected for analysis were limited to those included in the Foodbook study. Some foods, for example, raw flour, which emerged as a high-risk food in recent years (26,48), could not be included on this list because there were no data collected regarding its consumption in the Foodbook study.…”