Food scares consumer research

Monday 14 February 2005

The FSA requires insight into consumer's concerns about food, their attitudes to food scares and how these have changed, to help it determine how best to inform the public and address fears.

Research was commissioned to:

• establish whether consumers' attitudes towards food, and their concerns about food, have shifted in recent years
• understand current perceptions of food risks and what informs and influences them
• understand whether and how concerns over food differ across demographic groups
• explore how people react to messages about their food concerns
• explore whom people trust to inform them about their food concerns
• assess where worries about food fit into the overall landscape of concerns
• explore awareness and perceptions of regulation of the food industry and expectations of how far they expect the state to go in regulating it
• examine awareness of and response to examples of sanctions against food businesses which break rules/the law