Abstract
The correct understanding of consumers’ food labeling knowledge and perceptions is a prerequisite to develop and implement coherent and appropriate food safety policies. One objective of the paper was to discover how often consumers access and use specific food label information. Another objective was to explore stakeholders’ preferences for several public policy options relevant for food safety. In this respect, a survey on a sample of 312 Romanian consumers and the evaluation of several public policy options by four stakeholder groups (food producers and sellers, doctors, fitness trainers, and consumers) were carried out. The results revealed that the most frequently read types of information on the label were “expiration date” and “price”, closely followed by “quantity” and “brand”. Among tested public policies, those related to the traffic light labels and to the social interest messages with health claims were rewarded with high scores by investigated stakeholders. Although nutrition has a decisive impact on health state, nutrition information was not frequently read by people, thus justifying the implementation of a public policy meant to enhance consumers’ interest in and reading frequency of nutrition information on food label.
Highlights
The agro-food sector has undergone, over time, numerous interventions, some of which fall into the category of agricultural, environmental, health or consumer protection public policies, in order to guarantee food safety, animal welfare or to adapt the sector to increasing competition
A healthy diet helps prevent malnutrition in all its forms, as well as a series of non-communicable diseases (WHO, 2015). Both healthy diet and food safety are components of food quality (Aung and Chang, 2014).The presence of both is necessary at the same time, because the existence of one cannot compensate for the absence of the other
Results and discussions are structured on two sections, namely one focused on consumer label reading behavior and one dedicated to public policies options designed to promote food safety
Summary
The agro-food sector has undergone, over time, numerous interventions, some of which fall into the category of agricultural, environmental, health or consumer protection public policies, in order to guarantee food safety, animal welfare or to adapt the sector to increasing competition. A healthy diet helps prevent malnutrition in all its forms, as well as a series of non-communicable diseases (WHO, 2015). Both healthy diet and food safety are components of food quality (along with other attributes that are considered by the consumer such as taste or color) (Aung and Chang, 2014).The presence of both is necessary at the same time, because the existence of one cannot compensate for the absence of the other. The label is a tool that can help consumers to make choices that are healthy (which respect a balanced diet) and safe at the same time. For the promotion of a healthy diet, the World Health Organization (WHO) targets both policy makers and consumers: to the first category, WHO recommends to pore over regulatory and voluntary instruments, such as marketing policies, including food labeling, economic incentives or disincentives (i.e., subsidies, taxation); to consumers, WHO gives encouragements to demand healthy foods including through food labeling that ensures accurate, standardized and comprehensible information on nutrient contents in food (WHO, 2015)
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