Consumers Awareness and Perception of Food Safety from Shopping to Consumption

Abstract

Consumers attitude has shown to influence behaviour. This study examines consumer’s awareness and perception of food safety from shopping to consumption. A total of 73 consumers in the Australasian region were surveyed and the results highlighted some gaps in food safety knowledge and examined some critical violations in handling food at home. The relationship between consumers awareness and perception of food safety is examined in this paper. The data was analysed using SPPS version 24.0 for descriptive, frequency distribution and percentage. Pearson chi square tested the association between food safety awareness in relation to age, gender and educational level. Educated respondents with HACCP knowledge however significantly checked for packaging defects than their counterparts and 70.4 % always washed their hand with warm water and soap or detergents but critical temperature violation were identified with 27.4 % of the respondents thawing meat improperly,1.4 % left leftovers on the kitchen/bench table 5.5 % did not heat leftovers at all. These findings increase concerns and indicate gap in consumers food safety knowledge and practices. Overall, there is good general awareness of food safety among Australian consumers indicating that gaps need to be filled in with further education. The internet and social media appear to be the best method to reach audiences for food safety education. Consumers' understanding of their role and importance in the safety of foods prepared at home should, therefore, be reiterated and emphasized in food safety messages. A limitation of the study methodologies is that all studies relied on self-reported behaviours, a method that is known to be subject to reporting bias, therefore implementing observational studies would allow for validation of these results and a more accurate representation of consumer behaviour. Finally, future studies should develop questions and methods based on these surveys in order to benefit from this existing baseline knowledge and to allow comparisons over time to assess the effectiveness of food safety interventions on the reduction of food-borne illness. Perception and beliefs are shaped by knowledge, which in turn is a product of exposure to information sources and personal effort in obtaining information (12,13)