Food Safety Risk Communication Research Articles

Principles and Practices of Effective Food Safety Risk Communication – Introducing the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Food Safety Risk Communication Framework

This paper describes the principles and practices of effective food safety risk communication developed under the “Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Food Safety Risk Communication Framework and Associated Guidelines”. The framework recommends that effective food safety risk communication needs to be centered on the clear goal of protecting consumer health by ensuring transparency and timeliness, and communication on food safety matters should be conducted in a two-way process. It emphasizes the need to provide the public with credible information based on science and evidence and highlights that food safety is a shared responsibility among all stakeholders, including industry, government agencies, media organizations and consumers. It further highlights that food safety risk communication needs to be conducted in a consistent, systematic, inclusive, consultative, and preventative manner. The framework also indicates that effective food safety risk communication needs to pay attention to the backgrounds, experiences, and needs of concerned audiences. It stresses the importance of continuous improvement of the communication system to ensure food safety risk communication to be effective. Focusing on effective communications in response to food safety incidents, emergency or crisis situations, as well as everyday food safety communications, these principles and practical guidelines will help food safety regulators, food industry, food safety educators and other stakeholders improve their communications with target audiences.

Surveying citizens on food safety

Surveying citizens on food safety

Conflicting Issues of Sustainable Consumption and Food Safety: Risky Consumer Behaviors in Reducing Food Waste and Plastic Packaging.

Food-related consumer decisions have an impact on the environment. However, trending patterns of sustainable consumption often pose a challenge for food-safety authorities: these initiatives may unintentionally compromise food safety. The objective of this review is to support public agencies in the integration of sustainability issues into food-safety risk communication schemes. Environmentally conscious but risky behaviors aimed at the reduction of food waste and plastic packaging were chosen for discussion and scrutinized based on expert opinions. Those expert opinions clearly indicated that a significant part of environmentally conscious behaviors, such as removing mold, eating expired perishable food, overstoring leftovers, avoiding single-use plastic packaging even when cross-contamination is a threat, and using reusable bags without cleaning for a long time, often contribute to food-safety risks. Short, easy-to-remember messages were collected for each recognized risky behavior; they concentrated on prevention or providing an alternative that was still environmentally sensible but kept food-safety risks low (such as planning ahead to avoid leftovers, freezing leftovers in time, and sanitizing reusable bags). The identified challenges and solutions might encourage authorities to rethink their risk-communication practices and integrate a sustainability aspect in them.

Detection and quantification of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in vegetables and environmental samples at farm level

The purpose of this study was to detect and quantify total and pathogenic Vibrio parahaemolyticus from vegetables and environmental samples at the farm level in Cameron Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia. Most Probable Number (MPN) – Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) method was used to detect toxR, tdh and trh genes and to quantify their concentration in samples. Samples obtained were cabbage (20), carrot (10), cucumber (10), lettuce (31), tomato (18), manure (10), soil (12), surface swab (21) and water (14), with a total of 146 samples. Sampling locations involved were three vegetable farms, two packing houses and one loading bay. Based on the results, overall, 13.7% of samples were present with V. parahaemolyticus toxR (maximum concentration 1100 MPN/g), with the highest detection in cabbage (6%). Vibrio parahaemolyticus tdh was detected in 1.4% samples (maximum concentration 7.3 MPN/g), and V. parahaemolyticus trh could not be detected in any samples. No tdh and trh genes could be detected from the recovered isolates. This finding highlighted that vegetables and environmental samples could potentially be contaminated with V. parahaemolyticus which poses risk to consumers. This study could be useful in future food safety risk communication and management programmes.

Consumer Cognition Analysis of Food Additives Based on Internet Public Opinion in China.

Food additives play an important role in the food supply, and it has been a food safety topic of great concern to the public. There has been no systematic research on Chinese consumers’ concerns, attitudes, feelings, or opinions on supervision and media coverage of food additives in the past decade, which is an area worth exploring. This study was carried out to deeply understand consumers’ cognition of food additives and formulate food safety risk communication strategies of food additives in China. Big data of consumers’ online public opinion of China on food additives from 2011 to 2020 was collected and cleaned up using Haina Network Public Opinion Monitoring System version 2.0 (HNPOMS V2.0), followed by data analysis and visual display with the Ansi Food Safety Risk Communication System version 2.0 (AFSRCS V2.0). The results showed that the types of food additives of concern to the public have changed from 2011 to 2020, but the amount of food additives has always been of concern. The type of incident that the public is most concerned about is the illegal addition or abuse of additives. The public’s confidence in food production enterprises has been insufficient, but the functions of market supervision are becoming clearer and clearer, and their expectations are constantly increasing. Consumers’ cognition level increases with the strengthening of publicity and popular science, but the influence of “self-media” on public cognition is increasing day by day, and there is cognitive deviation, making it easy to mislead the public. Consumers’ cognition of food additives is the basis of risk communication. Combined with the research results, this paper puts forward corresponding suggestions on the market and social supervision measures, network media guidance strategy and risk communication strategy of China, respectively.

Measuring Consumers’ Perceived Bias of the Safety Risk of Domestic Infant Formula with Principal Component Analysis and Multidimensional Model

There is a large bias between consumers’ perception of food safety risks and the actual state of food safety. Accurate measurements of consumers’ perceived bias of food safety risk provide a scientific basis for the government to improve food safety risk communication measures. Based on the random sample of 559 consumers obtained by the scenario simulation experiment on domestic infant formula, consumers’ perceived bias of the safety risk of domestic infant formula was accurately measured with a principal component analysis and a multidimensional model. The results show that consumers’ perceived bias of the safety risk of domestic infant formula includes physical-performance risk, financial-time risk, and psychological risk. The physical-performance risk perception bias is the highest, followed by psychological risk perception bias and financial-time risk perception bias. There are significant differences in the perception bias of the safety risk of domestic infant formula among consumers with different demographic characteristics. The Chinese government could adjust consumers’ perceived bias of the food safety risk by establishing a food safety risk communication mechanism, strengthening the popularization of food safety knowledge, and preventing and managing food safety rumors.

The evolution of food safety risk communication: Models and trends in the past and the future

Management of risks and uncertainty played an important role in the rise of human cultures from the beginning. Long journey has been taken from deciphering spiritual signs to the usage of artificial intelligence. Communication about risks also went through an evolutionary path and became highly specialised. During previous decades, food safety risk communication developed to be a distinguishable and well-grounded profession. Based on literature of the last 40 years, the evolution of food safety risk communication is presented from the perspectives of consumer involvement, methodological approach, and challenges. Expected future trends are also unfolded during the analysis. The paper identifies 5 + 1 stages in the evolution of food safety risk communication: Pre-risk communication era, Deficit model, Dialogue model, Partnership model, and Behavioural insight model. Expected future trends are summarised as a 6th stage, called Controlled risk environment model. The models are separated by level of consumer involvement and methodological approach. Consumer science played a crucial role in the evolutionary procedure. Despite the observed advancement between the stages, the application of each communication model might have justification under certain circumstances. In practice, the different stages have no clear boundaries, and the models can overlap. An organisation can even move on to the next phase by skipping a previous evolutionary step.

Consumers’ intention to participate in food safety risk communication: A model integrating protection motivation theory and the theory of reasoned action

Food safety risk communication aims to enhance stakeholders' understanding of the assessment and management of food safety hazards and allows people to make informed judgements about food production and consumption. To analyse consumers' intention to participate in food safety risk communication, this paper develops an integrated model that combines the protection motivation theory with the reasoned action theory. Structural equation modeling with the partial least squares technique is used to test the theoretical model. Data were collected from 676 valid online survey responses from randomly selected consumers in northeast China. The results indicated that attitude is a key factor mediating the relationships between perceived severity, response efficacy, self-efficacy, and consumers’ intention to participate in food risk communication.

Consumers across cultures: a comparative study about consumers’ role in food safety-related academic literature

PurposeThe research aims at scrutinising food safety as a global concept and problem that has numerous cross-cultural aspects reflecting the diversity of consumption patterns and the culturally differing role of the consumer as well as mirroring the heterogeneity of socio-economic environment.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the role of consumer in food safety-related academic literature is investigated in seven languages (countries) including American English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Mandarin Chinese and Russian from a multidisciplinary, cross-cultural perspective.FindingsWith the aid of seven linguistic corpora built from the above mentioned languages, the research reveals noteworthy differences in the consumer-focused approach.Research limitations/implicationsThe study could have benefited from the inclusion of further languages (i.e. Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi etc.), the authors' lack of reliable language skills outside of the covered domain had to be taken into account. Further to that, the analysis conducted is based on a static observation, while food safety-related consumer science is developing quickly. Therefore, a dynamic analysis of consumer roles would most certainly yield in further salient outcome.Practical implicationsFood safety can be regarded in many ways–this is reflected in different national legislations, dissimilar country-level risk communication patterns as well as different perception of basic notions of food safety. It has not yet been extensively analysed, however, how different languages use the notion of food safety or consumer, which activities and which characteristics are most connected to these notions, and how food safety-related topics and the focus of scientific discourse in different languages differ from each other.Social implicationsPractical implications of the research results also include preparatory activities for food safety risk communication campaigns. In this field, the cultural aspects of food safety are as important as scientific risk assessment. The tools presented in this paper help a quick and comprehensive analysis of linguistic corpora, which could be used either in academic or general literature resources, even press releases. The results also call attention to the culture-driven perspectives of food safety; these new insights can be applied by researchers to review food safety literature more exhaustively considering the cultural context. Future elaboration of the topic (e.g. by introducing a time factor that would enable a dynamic analysis) can further enhance the utility value of similar studies.Originality/valueThe novelty of the article lies in the unique application of corpus linguistic methods with the aim of investigating the area, the trends and phenomena of food safety-related science. This study combines the achievements of food safety-related consumer science with corpus linguistic methods.

Emotion and Virality of Food Safety Risk Communication Messages on Social Media

This study investigates how the emotional tone of food safety risk communication messages predicts message virality on social media. Through a professional Internet content tracking service, we gathered news articles written about the 2018 romaine lettuce recall published online between October 30th and November 29th, 2018. We retrieved the number of times each article was shared on Twitter and Pinterest, and the number of engagements (shares, likes, and comments) for each article on Facebook and Reddit. We randomly selected 10% of the articles (n = 377) and characterized the emotional tone of each article using machine learning, including emotional characteristics such as discrete emotions, emotional valence, arousal, and dominance. Conveying negative valence, low arousal, and high dominance, as well as anger and sadness emotions were associated with greater virality of articles on social media. Implications of these findings for risk communication in the age of social media are discussed.

Food Safety Risk Communication between the Food Regulator and Consumer in China: An Evolutionary Game Perspective

Food safety risk communication has attracted widespread attention in China. The government is the leader in food risk communication. It has even more impact on consumers’ willingness to communicate food risk. Thus, this paper constructs a risk communication game model composed of the central government, local government, and consumers under food safety regulatory agencies in China. Based on the evolutionary game theory, we achieved the evolutionary stable equilibrium points under complying different constraint conditions by solving the replicator dynamic equations of parties in the dynamic system. In the end, some numerical examples have been displayed to simulate the agents’ choices. The results show that penalty cost, governance intensity, communication cost, and reputation of the government have an essential impact on consumers’ enthusiasm for food safety risk communication decision-making behavior. Furthermore, the choice of food safety risk communication strategies is performed with a dynamic process, which is constantly adjusted and optimized. The evolutionary game system can converge on an ideal state under certain conditions. Moreover, this study proposes suggestions and measures conducive to the tripartite game, which can offer valuable guidance on food risk communication practice and improve government efficiency in China. This research can provide the evolutionary mechanism and broaden our understanding of the relationship between food safety risk governance and food risk communication strategies.

Consumers' Food Safety Risk Communication on Social Media Following the Suan Tang Zi Accident: An Extended Protection Motivation Theory Perspective.

There are many hidden safety hazards in homemade food due to an absence of food preparation and storage knowledge, and this has led to many food safety incidents. The purpose of this study was to explore the influencing factors of consumers’ food risk communication behavior on social media in northeast China, using the protection motivation theory. We integrate the Suan Tang Zi food poisoning accident and the protection motivation theory to develop a conceptual model to predict food safety risk communication on social media. We conducted a questionnaire which adapted measures from the existing Likert scales. A total of 789 respondents from northeast China participated in this study. We tested our hypotheses using a structural equation model. Results show that perceived severity, perceived vulnerability and self-efficacy have a significant influence on consumer protection motivation. Response efficacies have a positive impact on consumer protection motivation, but response barriers have a negative impact on consumer protection motivation. Additionally, information need and protection motivation of consumers have a significant impact on food safety risk communication on social media. Overall, the protection motivation theory accounted for 71% of the variance in food safety risk communication on social media. Practical implications and suggestions are proposed for the related stakeholders, as well as consumers, to encourage the public to participate in the food risk communication in this study. The research findings presented the social media as a kind of food risk communication channel contributes to consumers acquire accurate information on food quickly, in turn, reduce the probability of food poisoning in daily life. Protection motivation theory may provide some insights into how we can increase the rate of food safety risk communication on social media.

Consideration on Food Safety Risk Communication under the Complex Social Environment

Consideration on Food Safety Risk Communication under the Complex Social Environment

A study of system dynamics modelling and optimization for food safety risk communication in China

Food safety risk communication (FSRC) is a very complex two-way system in China and its result strongly affects public confidence level to food safety regulation. In this study, a novel system dynamics (SD) model involving five communication organizations and 36 controlling parameters is established to investigate the interactive relationships among them and the dynamical behavior of FSRC. Subsequently, the nine optimization SD models with different objective functions are developed to investigate their capacities in producing controllable and optimal FSRC strategy. The results indicate that the proposed SD model is effective for the FSRC system to make effective risk assessment, management and decisions.

Food Safety Risk Information-Seeking Intention of WeChat Users in China.

Consumers’ food safety risk information-seeking behavior plays a vital role in improving their food quality and safety awareness and preventing food safety risks. Based on the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model (RISP), this paper empirically analyzes the food safety risk information-seeking intention of consumers in WeChat and influencing factors under the impact of food safety incidents. We use data from 774 WeChat users and apply the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. We also conduct multigroup analysis with demographic characteristics as moderating variables. The results demonstrated that: (1) Risk perception (p ≤ 0.01) has direct significant positive effects on consumers’ intention to seek food safety information. Besides, higher risk perception (p ≤ 0.01) regarding food safety risks will make people feel more anxious and threatened, and then expand the gap between the information they need and the relevant knowledge they actually have (p ≤ 0.1), which will further stimulate them to seek more information (p ≤ 0.05). (2) Informational subjective norms (p ≤ 0.01) can not only directly affect consumers’ information-seeking about food safety, but also indirectly affect consumers’ intention through information insufficiency (p ≤ 0.01). (3) The more consumers trust the relevant channels (p ≤ 0.01), the stronger their intention to search for food safety risk information. Moreover, the multiple-group analysis also shows that the effects of consumers’ gender, age, educational background, and average monthly earnings are different among different groups. Furthermore, implications are put forward for food safety risk communication efforts in China.

Program Session Report from 2019 Meeting on Food Safety Risk Communication

Program Session Report from 2019 Meeting on Food Safety Risk Communication

Food Safety Risk Communication Behavior on Social Media: The Case of Sina Weibo

Food Safety Risk Communication Behavior on Social Media: The Case of Sina Weibo

Assessment of Food Safety Risk Communication: A Case Study of a Scenario Experiment

The effect assessment of food safety risk communication is a kind of inspection of the effectiveness of risk communication in food safety incident, and it is also an important basis for constantly improving the mode of risk communication and the effect of risk communication. Through the scenario simulation research, the paper uses “Henan Shuanghui clenbuterol event” as a case background, using the government side, the market side and the third party as the main bodies of the assessment, using the clenbuterol harm, the process and processing mechanisms as the topics of food safety risk communication, and then evaluates the effect of risk communication from the three dimensions of arrival rate and timeliness, accuracy and adequacy, interaction and transparency. The experimental results show that the arrival rate of risk communication is the best in the event, and the interaction is the worst.

Assessment of Food Safety Risk Communication: A Case Study of a Scenario Experiment

The effect assessment of food safety risk communication is a kind of inspection of the effectiveness of risk communication in food safety incident, and it is also an important basis for constantly improving the mode of risk communication and the effect of risk communication. Through the scenario simulation research, the paper uses “Henan Shuanghui clenbuterol event” as a case background, using the government side, the market side and the third party as the main bodies of the assessment, using the clenbuterol harm, the process and processing mechanisms as the topics of food safety risk communication, and then evaluates the effect of risk communication from the three dimensions of arrival rate and timeliness, accuracy and adequacy, interaction and transparency. The experimental results show that the arrival rate of risk communication is the best in the event, and the interaction is the worst.

A Systematic Review of the Use of Social Media for Food Safety Risk Communication

This article covers the current published literature related to the use of social media in food safety and infectious disease communication. The aim was to analyze literature recommendations and draw conclusions about how best to utilize social media for food safety risk communication going forward. A systematic literature review was conducted, and 24 articles were included for analysis. The inclusion criteria were (i) original peer-reviewed articles and (ii) primary focus on communication through social media about food safety and/or infectious diseases. Studies were coded for themes about social media applications, benefits, limitations, and best practices. Trust and personal beliefs were important drivers of social media use. The wide reach, immediacy, and information gathering capacities of social media were frequently cited benefits. Suggestions for social media best practices were inconsistent among studies, and study designs were highly variable. More evidence-based suggestions are needed to better establish guidelines for social media use in food safety and infectious disease risk communication. The information gleaned from this review can be used to create effective messages for shaping food safety behaviors.