Polls Show Doubts on Food Safety

The public remains deeply concerned about the safety of the nation’s food supply, according to findings from recent opinion surveys. This general lack of confidence is coupled with a “dramatic” erosion in consumers’ faith in the government’s ability to protect them from hazards such as the contaminated hamburgers that caused four deaths earlier this year.

Polls commissioned in 1993 by two different groups yielded similar responses. Both indicated that the continuing debate over pesticides, incidents of contamination and other related controversies are creating a strong sense of doubt about the wholesomeness of America’s food.

The most recent survey was released last week by the Food Marketing Institute, a supermarket trade association. Another poll, dedicated entirely to food safety issues, was published in April by Public Voice for Food & Health Policy, a consumer advocacy group in Washington.

FMI, which has been polling consumers about health, cooking and purchasing habits every year since 1974, found that only 13% of the people surveyed expressed complete confidence that “the food in your supermarket is safe.” Sixty percent said they were “mostly confident,” 23% were “somewhat doubtful,” 4% were “very doubtful” and 1% were not sure about the safety of food sold in today’s supermarkets. The figures are virtually unchanged from 1992 data.

An FMI analysis of the results stated that the responses were reason for concern and conceded that “consumers are questioning the safety of their food supply.”

On the question of the government’s ability to ensure food safety, the decline was marked. The FMI survey found that only 20% of those queried said they rely on federal and state agencies to ensure that products are safe. The figure is the lowest in 10 years of FMI polling and down from a record high of 37% in 1985. The largest number of respondents said they now rely on themselves to ensure product safety; 21% depend on manufacturers; 10% on supermarkets, and the remainder on a mix of groups such as consumer organizations and farmers.

“Shoppers continue to assume responsibility themselves for food safety. They remain nearly twice as likely to feel that they should take this responsibility rather than rely on any other source. Consumers now rely about equally on manufacturers and government--a continuation of the dramatic change from 1988 when three times as many consumers relied on the government as on industry,” according to Opinion Research Corp., which conducted the poll for FMI.

When asked about particular threats to the food supply, 79% in the FMI survey said that pesticide residues pose a “serious health hazard.” Another 17% said the chemicals are “something of a hazard,” 2% said the compounds are “not a hazard at all” and 2% were not sure. Frequently, pollsters will combine responses from those sharing at least some common ground in their answers and, in this case, a surprising 96% said that pesticides are at least somewhat of a hazard in food.

Similarly, 92% of those queried for the Public Voice poll said that they were either “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the health problems caused by chemicals and pesticides used to grow food. Specifically, 60% said they were very concerned; 32% said they were somewhat concerned; 6% were not at all concerned, and 2% did not express an opinion.

The Public Voice survey gauged consumer attitudes toward meat, milk, cigarette smoke and air pollution. It found that “Americans’ concern about agri-chemicals exceeded their concerns about food poisoning from bacteria in meat, growth hormones in milk, second-hand smoke and air pollution.”

Again, survey respondents felt that they were being poorly served by the federal agencies when it came to chemicals in food. Thirty-one percent “strongly disagreed” with a statement that consumers are well protected by the government; 27% somewhat disagreed; 11% strongly agreed; 28% somewhat agreed, and 3% had no opinion.

This widespread consumer concern about pesticides and other chemicals in the food supply is especially important at this time because the National Academy of Sciences is poised to release a study on the elevated threat to the health of children by residues in fruit and vegetables.