When will salad be safe again? Addressing consumers

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When will salad be safe again? Addressing
consumers concerns during produce-related
outbreaks

• Dr. Sarah Wilson
• Food Safety Network
• University of Guelph

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Food Safety Network
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FSN Information Centre

• National toll-free line
• E-mail response
• Information research
• Fact sheets and other resources
• Bilingual service (English/French)

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What are consumers asking?

• What products are affected?
• Will I make my family sick?
• Can I make it safe to eat?
• Does the recall affect
• head lettuce?
• Canada?
• other vegetable juices containing carrots?
• carrot juice I make myself?
• eating raw carrots?

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What is the media asking?

• How did this happen?
• Are outbreaks increasing?
• Is industrial agriculture the problem?
• What can consumers do?

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Media

• Media influences and leads public perception
• Through media we are able to make a story worse
  or better

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Risk Communication Failure

Scientific Assessment of Risk
Public Perception of Risk
Information Vacuum
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Public perception of risk

• More acceptable
• voluntary risks
• risks under individual control
• risks that seem fair
• risk information from trustworthy sources

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Public perception of risk (contd)

• Less acceptable
• risks that seem ethically objectionable
• unnatural or artificial risks
• exotic risks

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Food safety begins at home

• Family
• Friends
• Guests
• Coworkers

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We have the safest food supply

• Contradictory messages
• Local is safe
• Its not the organic spinach
• Dont eat the spinachcook to an internal
  temperature of 160 F
• Not Risk-Free
• As former Washington State University food
  specialist Virginia Hillers puts it, "We are now
  at a point that we must acknowledge we can never
  get to a 'risk-free' food supply. Given our
  current state of knowledge and practices, a low
  infectious dose pathogen like E. coli O157H7
  will occasionally get into the food supply and
  people are going to get sick."
• Oct 1, 2006 TimesUnion.com

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When will salad be safe again?

• Was it ever safe?
• Talk about it publicly
• so what happened to the lettuce outbreak?
• Tailor messages for audience situation
• rapid, reliable, relevant, repeated
• Be prepared for the tough questions

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What you say vs How you say it
Empathy and/or caring
Commitment and dedication
Competence and expertise
Honesty and openness
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www.foodsafetynetwork.ca 1-866-503-7638 fsnrsn_at_uog
uelph.ca