Sound and reliable risk communication can help public officials prevent ineffective, fear-driven, and potentially damaging public responses to food-related incidents. Taking appropriate risk communication procedures would foster the trust and confide...
Sound and reliable risk communication can help public officials prevent ineffective, fear-driven, and potentially damaging public responses to food-related incidents. Taking appropriate risk communication procedures would foster the trust and confidence that are vital in solving crisis situation. So this study was executed to investigate ⅰ) theories on risk communication ⅱ) risk communication application in korea and to analyze the case studies of food incidents such as kimchi, benzene in beverage, sulfur dioxide in Chinese steamed rice, malachite green in fish, parasites egg in kimchi, melamine in snack, as well as mad cow disease scandal. Also this study was implemented to analyze the perception of stakeholder such as consumers, officials and food manufacturers through questionnaire. The major findings are as follows;
Based on the principles of risk communication, in the case of benzene in beverage, effective risk communication was achieved through obtaining relevant information in advance, quantifying risks, opening the risks to the public with the participation of risk communication experts and establishing long-term controlling measures of the risk. On the other hand, in the case of beef from United State of America, on the initiative stage of incident, competent authorities didn't provide the public with reliable information nor collect the public opinion. Even though there were some efforts to deliver information, they were not so effective, as a result the communication of that risk became untrustworthy. The result of this study shows that consumers are informed about food safety information mainly through television and the internet. It is known that they thought the most important factors related to food safety information are accuracy and confidence. Interestingly, the number of the consumers who remember the mad cow disease scandal, melamine in snack and mice head in snack incidents being on social issues are much larger than benzene incident in beverage. People tend to be exposed to food safety related information from television and news just as they say. On the other hand, some of them try to look for more accurate and confidential information from governmental websites. Regarding the delivery of food safety related information, consumers prefer the way of announcement using experts groups, such as professors and medical doctors, rather than government alone. This study implies that the understanding of consumers involved in risk communication is very important in deciding the effective way of implementing risk communication. In addition, it is important to define problems more openly, to recognize that risk is relative, to separate values and sciences, to identify other forums for wider debates and to build trust by practicing mutual respects. Government authorities also try to deliver accurate meaning of the risk and cooperate with the media as successful channel for risk communication, through regular meetings with the media which is the major means for consumers to obtain information.