Consumers often assess food safety risks and their acceptability differently than experts do. The result can be the diversion of limited public health resources from public health hazards that pose known serious threats. More efficient provision of food safety information could lessen, although probably not eliminate, the gap between the risk perceptions of consumers and those of experts.
An apparently widespread uneasiness persists among consumers concerning food safety—an uneasiness marked by wariness of pesticides and other chemical residues in food and their cancer-causing and neurotoxic potential. Yet what consumers perceive to be the greatest food safety risks are not always the risks ranked highest by food safety experts. To the extent that consumers minimize known serious public health risks, they may emphasize less important risks at the cost of neglecting more important ones, sending confusing signals to the food industry in the process. They may also encourage the diversion of public resources away from more serious public health problems.
The risk assessments of consumers and those of experts often deviate because experts fail to credit all of the many factors that influence the public's perception of the acceptability of various risks. Even if consumers had access to all of the food safety information that experts possess, as well as a scientific understanding of that information, they might judge the acceptability of various risks differently than experts. However, more efficient provision of food safety information could lessen the divergence between the food safety concerns of consumers and those of food safety experts.
Apart from the social values that color the public's perception of risk, there are scientific grounds for concerns about food safety assessments by experts. Major uncertainties exist regarding the identification and characterization of food safety hazards and the risk these hazards pose for public health. Scientists lack a full understanding of dose-response relationships and the complex biological, biochemical, and toxicological mechanisms by which a toxin or pathological micro-organism acts within the body. Interpretation of animal or cell culture studies that are used to assess these relationships and mechanisms is often controversial. In some cases, scientists are even uncertain about which animal species make the best test subjects for indicating effects on human biological systems. Nor do they agree on the appropriate analytical models to estimate the correspondence between high doses of chemicals administered for relatively short times to relatively small samples of test animals, on the one hand, and the typically lower doses of chemicals to which broader human populations are exposed over longer periods of time, on the other.
Consumers and experts often rank food safety risks differently.
Analysis of human epidemiological data can complement or serve as an alternative to toxicology-based risk assessment in evaluating food safety hazards, but data limitations—compounding influences such as lifestyle and environmental factors, and long time lags between exposure and potential effects—cause problems in teasing out correlation and causality. Moreover, attempts to assess the magnitude of various food safety risks are hampered by underreporting of foodborne disease outbreaks and a lack of understanding about how the effects of chemical and microbial contaminants vary among high-risk population groups such as infants, children, pregnant or lactating mothers, and people with impaired immune systems.
Perhaps the major differences between expert and public assessments of current foodborne risk in the United States concern the pesticide issue. A variety of consumer polls indicates that consumers rank pesticide residues, followed by environmental contaminants, as the food safety risk of most concern. At the same time that consumers are exerting economic and political pressure to reform pesticide regulation and protect the public from pesticide exposure, however, many government and private experts are minimizing the risks attributable to manmade pesticides. These experts indicate that the major and most urgent known foodborne risks stem from pathogens (disease-causing microorganisms), followed by nutritional imbalance or deficiency and toxic natural constituents of foods. They also emphasize that risk of disease for individuals is linked more closely to lifetime dietary patterns than to occasional encounters with individual toxicants.
One explanation for the disparity in perceptions of foodborne risk is that the American consumer is poorly grounded in basic scientific principles. This is manifested by a lack of appreciation that, in many cases, the toxicity of a particular substance is a function of dosage; that differences exist between agents that initiate cancers and those that only promote their progress; that natural substances are also "chemicals" and that some may be as toxic as synthetics; and that pesticides may provide health benefits as well as economic benefits. Experts in consumer behavior also report that many consumers misunderstand and mistrust basic concepts of statistical probability and inference that can be involved in inspection sampling and the interpretation of epidemiological evidence.
On the other hand, many scientific experts are criticized for not better characterizing dimensions of risk of particular concern to consumers. If exposure is involuntary, is manmade, is viewed as unnecessary, could result in a dreaded condition, or otherwise seems unfair, the risks are considered by consumers to be more important and less acceptable than other risks. In addition, consumers observe that experts often do not agree among themselves about the importance of different risks. For example, scientists have not been able to establish threshold levels for many carcinogens—a particular concern of consumers. Nor is their knowledge of the neurotoxicity of chemicals complete. Disputes on these matters among experts are common, and expert opinion has sometimes proven wrong in the past. Consumer activists are also aware of criticism by experts of the adequacy of sampling methods currently employed by food safety regulators. In many cases, critics argue, sampling sizes are extremely small. In others, gaps in sampling occur due to the lack of assay methods, regulatory protocols, or funds.
Economic theories of information
Better understanding of how and when different types of consumers and producers search for, receive, and use information about various food safety risks is important in narrowing the gap on risk assessments among food safety experts, the general public, and business interests that are in a position to generate and pass on food safety information. Economic theories of information help to explain the efficiency with which consumers and others acquire and use such information.
Food safety experts in both private and public sectors presumably have greater incentives and resources than consumers to invest in specific scientific knowledge and to use this knowledge relatively efficiently. Because they are able to integrate food safety information within a scientifically based conceptual framework, experts are better equipped than consumers to balance the costs of acquiring information, which may be extremely high, with the benefits of having or using it, which may be less certain for consumers than for experts. Because the private sector has problems in realizing the benefits of providing food safety information, such information tends to be undersupplied to consumers.
Food safety information tends to be undersupplied to consumers because the private sector has problems appropriat-ing the benefits of providing it
Consumers rank pesticide residues as the food safety risk of most concern, yet many experts minimize the risks attributable to manmade pesticides
Frequently, food producers and processors have more information relating to the safety of a food product than the consumer has. They possess relevant data about agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides applied, production methods employed, and food manufacturing techniques used to bring a food product to market. They may also be aware of the health characteristics of agricultural labor, slaughterhouse personnel, or food handlers, and the sanitary conditions of food processing plants—all of which influence the safety of foods.
How producers' greater access to food safety information translates into market behavior and whether consumers benefit or suffer from that behavior depends, in part, on the incentives that public policies provide to producers to use and transmit this information. The economics literature shows that high-quality products may not be supplied in markets in which consumers have limited information. In these markets some of the desirable effects of competition vanish, and producers may have an incentive to reduce not only information provided to consumers but product quality. Adulteration of products for economic purposes (for example, watering of wine or shorting of weights) may be one consequence, as may be unsafe products (spoiled meat disguised with additives or packaging, for example). So while much food safety information can provide health or economic benefits to consumers, markets frequently fail to offer sufficient incentives for individual firms to generate such information.
In general, economic theory suggests that incomplete and asymmetrically held information leads to one of two outcomes: either a market does not exist and goods that consumers prefer are not provided, or competition leads to lower-quality products because firms cannot capture the benefits of their efforts to provide additional food safety information when selling apparently homogenous products. Therefore, public policies aimed at improving the availability of safety information—such as setting uniform final, product standards for foods or standards for food production and processing—are desirable if the social benefits outweigh costs. Product performance standards refer to regulations that set specific requirements or limits for product attributes. These may include chemical tolerance levels (maximum limits) for pesticide or animal drug residues in food products, ingredient standards, maximum filth standards, and so on. Production or processing standards refer to direct regulation of the food production process. Examples include banning or regulating the use of irradiation technology and particular agricultural chemicals and food additives. Policy instruments to enhance the efficiency of information processing—that is, the use of information in making production or purchasing decisions—include product labeling provisions and requirements that producers report specific information such as pesticide application rates.
Disparity in perceptions of foodborne risk may be due to consumers' poor grounding in scientific principles and experts' failure to explain dimensions of risk of concern to consumers.
Some evidence suggests that public policies that permit food suppliers to have advertising or information disclosure rights may encourage socially desirable competition in the area of food quality. For example, if scientific consensus points to the desirability of lowered saturated fat intake or increased fiber in the diet, then allowing firms to compete on the basis of these product characteristics may lead to a greater supply of desirable products. This theory is given credence by a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) study of the cereal market that was released in October 1989. The study showed that producer health claims were a significant source of information regarding the potential benefits of fiber consumption. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that the number and proportion of new high-fiber cereals increased considerably during the years 1985 to 1987, when some cereal companies began advertising and labeling campaigns stressing the high-fiber content of their products. This evidence suggests that health claim advertising and labeling rights may be important to the development of healthier food products. It should be noted, however, that health claims are extremely controversial, especially in cases in which no scientific consensus exists about the desirability of the claim being made. Examples include claims that food products are organic or pesticide-free, thus implying that they are healthier.
Judging acceptable risk
Because of production, resource, and knowledge constraints, it is not possible to have risk-free food. Choices are and must be made as to the kinds and levels of risk acceptable at any given point in history. The determination of acceptable risk, as many have noted, is not a definitive economic or a scientific determination. Rather it is a result of a set of social judgments, reflecting the interplay (in different situations) of political, social, economic, scientific, ethical, legal, and psychological forces. Social judgments about acceptable risk vary among societies and in relation to different products over time.
Economic analysis provides one important input into the social determination of acceptable risk. Its major contribution in the food safety policy area, as in most other policy areas, is to provide an understanding of and a framework for evaluating tradeoffs implicit in alternative public and private choices. In particular, economic analysis can lessen the divergence between the food safety concerns of consumers and those of experts by identifying the determinants—such as cost and convenience—of information acquisition and use by consumers, producers, and other groups under varying circumstances. It can also contribute to a growing understanding of the likely behavior of market participants in different markets under conditions where quality and safety information is uncertain and asymmetrically held. Finally, economic analysis can assist in identifying not only socially desirable but cost-effective policies and policy instruments to enhance food safety understanding in both public and private sectors and to improve market food safety performance.
Carol S. Kramer is a fellow with the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy at Resources for the Future.
A version of this article appeared in print in the October 1990 issue of Resources magazine.
A version of this article appeared in print in the October 1990 issue of Resources magazine.
