Public cognition and behavior are still insufficient, food safety science can be customized on demand

Our reporter Lian He

During the 17th Annual Meeting of the Chinese Society of Food Science and Technology in 2020, the International Food Safety Education Forum co-hosted by the Chinese Society of Food Science and Technology and the Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center was held concurrently

Public awareness of food safety is still insufficient

Chen Si, an associate researcher at the National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, said that over the past 10 years, poisoning from eating wild mushrooms has been the number one cause of death in China's food safety

"When we went to the grassroots level, the science staff told us that the cognition and behavior of the people who really eat wild mushrooms are actually very difficult to change.

Chen Si analyzed that eating wild mushroom poisoning is different from common food safety risks such as pesticide residue risk, heavy metal risk, pathogenic bacteria risk, etc.

Feng Yaohua, an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science at Purdue University, also talked about the same challenges faced in consumer food safety education

Although various social events and food-borne disease outbreaks in recent years will affect consumers' evaluation of a certain food and make consumers willing to receive food safety education information, Feng Yaohua pointed out that people's food safety cognition and behavior are not Consistent, "We did a survey in the United States and showed that 50% of the respondents knew that a thermometer was needed to control the temperature when cooking, but in fact, only 5% of consumers would use it

Feng Yaohua said that the occurrence of this kind of situation is related to the cognition of consumers, and consumers generally have the illusion that "even if there is any safety problem with the food, it is not necessarily me who will get sick.

Shift to audience-centric two-way communication

Both Feng Yaohua and Chen Si believe that when consumers have a fixed psychological cognition, it is not easy to change consumers' food safety behavior

Chen Si said that in the eyes of people who eat mushrooms, TV is the most common channel for them to obtain information, and they most trust village sages or residents committee members who know the local situation very well, but they do not agree with popular science personnel

Chen Si said that the first suggestion for such food safety risk education is to contextualize the content of popular science

Secondly, the identification method should be as accurate as possible.

In addition, communication channels can be optimized.

Chen Si concluded that, whether it is the risk of wild mushroom poisoning or other risks, in order to achieve audience-centered food safety risk communication, four aspects need to be changed: from one-way knowledge promotion to audience-centered two-way communication, The goal of communication has also changed from one-way notification to influencing cognition and behavior change; changing methods and methods, taking risk cognition research as the starting point, to strengthen the corresponding discipline construction, standardize cognition research methods, and precise strategies; optimize the personnel team, Paying more attention to the power of social science and improving communication ability; realizing the accurate allocation of resources can strengthen the communication input centered on the audience