Public Understanding of Food Risk Issues and Food Risk Messages on the Island of Ireland: The Views of Food Safety Experts

Abstract

Food safety experts have a key role in constructing food risk messages and thus their perceptions will influence how food risk issues are communicated to the public. This research examined the perceptions of food safety experts regarding public understanding of food risk issues and food risk messages on the island of Ireland. It also looked into expert views of the barriers to effective food risk communication and how to improve food risk messages. One hundred and forty‐three experts, working in areas related to food safety, completed an online questionnaire. Questionnaire and statement design was guided by the results of four in‐depth interviews with food safety experts. The findings indicate that most experts surveyed have little confidence in the public's understanding of food risk issues, their assessment of food risks, their ability to deal with scientific information and their food safety practices. Experts are of the view that the public under‐assesses the risk associated with some microbiological hazards and over‐assesses the risk associated with other hazards such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The opinion of experts with regard to GMOs is not supported by previous consumer research. Experts noted that the level of education and age were important determinants for the level of understanding of food risk issues and messages. Experts were of the view that early intervention via school curricula was the best method to improve public understanding of food risk messages in the long term. Furthermore, experts are of the view that the media have the ability to improve awareness and knowledge about food risk issues but believe that the media tend to communicate information that is misleading. The majority of experts also believe that they should communicate uncertainty but are not confident that the public is able to cope with this uncertainty. Many of the experts also indicated a desire for training on how to interact with the media. The results may be used by those experts who are involved in the construction of food risk messages to improve the design and communication of food risk messages.

How food regulators communicate with consumers about food safety

“…There is limited research about how food regulators perceive consumers to understand food regulation with existing literature suggesting the food regulators believe that consumers overestimate the risk of new technologies such as genetically modified food and underestimate microbial risks (De Boer et al 2005). It is this gap that forms the basis of this paper.…”

“…Previous research suggests that food regulators view the public as underestimating the risks associated with food and as having limited understanding of scientific information about food safety (De Boer et al 2005). This paper presents strategies used by food regulators to improve communication of food risks.…”

Consumers' perceptions of food risk management quality: Chinese and Korean evaluations

“…Some studies argued that the public tends to 'misjudge' the relative food risks at least when compared with the expert opinions (Lazo et al 2000;hansen et al 2003). These studies reported that the experts tend to believe in the rationality of arguments, facts, and science, arguing that science in itself provides an adequate strategy to control risks, while the consumers tend to use factors such as the distrust in social actors, the credibility of risk regulators and the perceived controllability of risks in assessing risks (Figure 1) (De Boer et al 2005;Van Kleef et al 2007). Understanding potential differences in perceptions of the effective FrM between consumers and experts is important for designing the appropriate FrM strategies, as a failure to integrate societal concerns and values into the risk analysis procedures is one of the factors associated with the decline in the public confidence in the risk assessment and risk management (renn and rohrmann 2000; Frewer et al 2005).…”

Development of the Consumer Refrigerator Safety Questionnaire: A Measure of Consumer Perceptions and Practices

“…Knowledge has been shown to play a role in the formation of perceptions and beliefs and therefore, has an impact on current food safety practices and willingness to change current practices to bring them in line with 'best practice' guidelines (27). Associations between the socio-demographic characteristics of the individual (including age, gender, level of education, living environment, social class and participation in home economics training), risk awareness, food safety knowledge and behavior have also been observed (9,33,36,42).…”