Consumer Food Safety Confidence Remains Steady

According to the Food Business News article, the survey showed, as in previous years, there is consistency in consumers’ beliefs that food safety is primarily the responsibility of government (74 percent) and industry (70 percent). Overall, approximately one-third of the respondents (31 percent) see food safety as a shared responsibility among five or more stakeholders that include farmers and producers, retailers and consumers themselves.

In addition, there has been a decline in basic consumer food safety practices such as washing hands with soap and water (89 percent in 2010 vs. 92 percent in 2008). The same decline also was identified in microwave food safety practices, where 69 percent of survey respondents in 2010 (compared with 79 percent in 2008) follow all of the cooking instructions.

According to the article, when asked to identify the most important food safety issue today, 44 percent of respondents identified foodborne illness from bacteria as the number one issue, a decrease compared with the 2009 survey. Notable is that 39 percent of respondents identified “chemicals in food” as the most important food safety issue, an increase compared with 2009.

The survey also showed that consumers primarily are getting their food safety information from television news programming (43 percent) and the Internet (32 percent). Information from government agencies or officials was cited by 14 percent of the survey respondents.

Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they were not aware of any food supply safety practices. Among those consumers who said they were aware, improvements to packaging and “standard protocols” were the top two cited.