Confidence in Food Safety Declines : Consumers: Pesticides, growth hormones and bacteria raising more concerns, survey shows.

Consumer confidence in the safety of the U.S. food supply continues to decline, according to a nationwide survey released at a supermarket industry convention here.

The poll found that only 15% of the 1,005 households queried said that they were “completely confident” that the food sold in grocery stores is safe. The results of the telephone survey surfaced in “Trends” a wide-ranging opinion survey commissioned by the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), a Washington-based trade group.

“The percentage of shoppers who have complete confidence in food safety dropped significantly, or by eight points since January, 1989,” when 23% of the respondents expressed similar views, the report stated.

Sixty-four percent of those in the recent survey said they were “mostly confident” about supermarket food while 18% stated that they were “somewhat doubtful.” The poll also found that 2% reported being “very doubtful” about the safety of food sold in grocery stores. The margin of error is about 4%.

“Shoppers continue to express strong concern about food safety,” the report stated. The decline in confidence comes after 14 months of continuing controversy over the presence of pesticide residues, bacterial contaminants and animal growth hormones in the food supply. “The safety of food products in supermarkets is a serious and legitimate concern for all of us,” said E. Dean Werries, FMI chairman and an Oklahoma City retailer. “It’s important for us to do everything we can to make the food supply safer as we learn about new hazards.”

Werries insisted, however, that the American food supply is the “safest in the world.” At the same time, he added that federal and state governments could provide more leadership on the safety issue. Werries called the current regulatory effort “chaos.”

Evidence of the changing public mood also appeared in response to a question on whether the survey’s respondents sought out any information on food safety. “Shoppers now take a more proactive role in seeking food safety information than in the past,” the report stated.

Forty-six percent of those queried said that they had obtained such data in the past year, an increase over 1989’s level of 37%. Fifty-four percent made no such effort. One percent had no opinion.

Safety issues are not the only credibility problem facing the food industry.

Despite the proliferation of health claims on food products, the survey found that consumers have become skeptical of such claims. When asked about products that offer health benefits-such as lowering the risk of heart disease-only 8% said these statements are “very believable.” Another 52% said the claims are “somewhat believable;” 26% said that the statements are “not very believable;” and 13% said the claims were “not at all believeable.”

“(The findings) indicate a great deal of distrust, or at least confusion, on the part of our shoppers,” said Patrick W. Collins, president of Ralphs Grocery Co., who discussed the findings at an FMI seminar. He said the skepticism is driven by a belief that food health claims are not truthful, only partially accurate or just an advertising gimmick.

The findings are timely considering that the federal government is in the midst of formulating new regulations that would considerably restrict the language allowed on food labels.

One health message that has been successfully conveyed by the scientific community, according to the Trends poll, is the benefits of low-fat products. “In recent years, consumers were told by the experts that cholesterol was the dietary villain,” said Timothy M. Hammonds, FMI senior vice president. “But last year, the message was changed. From the surgeon general to the National Academy of Sciences, experts cautioned that saturated fat, more than cholesterol must be avoided. This advice is being translated into action. Low-fat content has emerged as the number one nutrition concern among shoppers.”

Forty-six percent of those surveyed identified fat content as their greatest dietary concern, a 17% jump from 1989.

The American consumer’s viewpoints were not the only thing on the minds of 32,000 people who attended the institute’s annual convention at McCormick Place, which featured four-days of seminars and exhibits. “It is likely that the astounding events (in Eastern Europe) would never have occurred had the Soviet system been able to keep food market shelves full,” said Hammonds. “The ultimate difference may have been that simple miracle that each of you make happen every day: the democracies feed our people at prices they can afford.”

FMI’s 1,600 members operate 19,000 retail food stores with a combined annual sales volume of $180 billion, or more than 50% of the nation’s total grocery sales.