What Is Safe and How Much Does It Matter? Food Vendors’ and Consumers’ Views on Food Safety in Urban Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines the food safety beliefs of vendors and consumers in a mid-sized Nigerian city using data from in-depth interviews and cognitive mapping techniques drawn from ethnography. We examine vendors’ and consumers’ perspectives on which foods are safe, which are not, and why; the place of foodborne illness among other health concerns and motivators of food choice; and how salient food safety is as a concern for vendors. The main perceived causes of unsafe food were found to be chemicals and insects; while bacterial illnesses were widely mentioned as a cause of gastrointestinal symptoms, these were not necessarily linked to food in consumers’ minds. Respondents agreed strongly that certain foods (e.g., cowpea, beef, green leafy vegetables, and local rice) were less safe than others. The importance of food safety as a choice motivator among consumers varies depending on framing: when asked directly, it was prominent and closely related to visible cleanliness, but concerns about food safety competed in consumers’ minds against other salient motivators of food and vendor choice, such as price. Most vendors did not see food safety, cleanliness, or hygiene as a key trait of a successful vendor, and just over half of vendors had any concern about the safety of their food. In conclusion, we note the implications for intervention designs, particularly the need to build upon consumers’ and vendors’ current beliefs and practices related to food safety in order to make foodborne disease prevention a more salient concern in food choice.

How Perspectives on Food Safety of Vendors and Consumers Translate into Food-Choice Behaviors in 6 African and Asian Countries

“…Mistrust in food vendors' ability to follow safe food practices led consumers to buy prepackaged foods, equating fewer instances of food contamination to healthiness. Nordhagen et al [9] and Pradeilles et al [25] found that consumers not only perceived the risk of exposure to contaminants such as bacteria as being lower with prepackaged foods but also noted that many of these foods are poor in nutrients. They contain high fat and sugar contents, which are associated with the risk of noncommunicable diseases [42,43].…”

“…Consumers' perspectives about food safety rely partly on the food's smell, taste, attributes, and appearance as criteria for safe food consumption [9,13,[15][16][17]. Prinsen et al [18] indicated that a food's appearance held higher value than how it was processed and stored.…”

Performance of Local Government Regulations During the Pandemic to Improve the Economic Value of City Image in South Sulawesi

“…Performance of Street Vendors is related to the ability of street vendors to increase buyers of their products with the expectation that customers will increase (Martínez et al, 2017). Increased orders will have a positive effect on profits, therefore stall design and service are very important to prioritise (Andriyansah & Ferdinand, 2019;Nordhagen et al, 2022). Image is the main goal in determining travelling.…”

Foodborne zoonoses control in low- and middle-income countries: Identifying aspects of interventions relevant to traditional markets which act as hurdles when mitigating disease transmission

“…Improving food safety intervention design through an understanding of context and use of participatory methods Contextual consideration is potentially missing in some interventional design, through the increased acknowledgment of the need to develop multi-disciplinary teams with a strong representation from the social sciences, will continue to enhance intervention design, implementation, and evaluation (Ngwili et al, 2021;Di Prima et al, 2022). Qualitative studies drawing on ethnographic methodologies are an important yet underutilized method when it comes to fully understand the behavioral context within which interventions are designed (Bardosh et al, 2014;Crandall et al, 2016;Nordhagen et al, 2022), and such studies can be supplemented by contextual analysis through systematic literature reviews (Nordhagen et al, 2022), structured surveys, or direct observations (Lee et al, 2022). Ethnographic methods can also be applied to understand why interventions fail to yield improvements, such as in the case of understanding community norms and beliefs on latrine use in light of a disappointing uptake of a community led total sanitation program in Zambia aiming to reduce exposure to T. solium (Bulaya et al, 2015;Thys et al, 2015).…”