Consumers more confident with salmonella risk reduction at farm

By Jess Halliday

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Meat Salmonella Chicken

Danish consumers may be more willing to pay more for minced pork products with a reduced risk of salmonella contamination – but they prefer it if measures are taken on the farm rather than after slaughter.

The globalisation of the food industry and large-scale farming has led to efficiency gains, but when the system encounters food safety problems they can spread and escalate quickly. A number of high profile food scandals have increased consumers’ sensitivity to perceptions of food safety.

More than 330,000 cases of salmonellosis and campylobacteriosis were reported in the EU in 2006, but the true figure including unreported cases may be as much as 20 times higher.

Researchers from the Universities of Copenhagen and Southern Denmark devised an internet survey in which 844 Danish consumers were asked whether they were prepared to pay for meat produced using risk reduction methods.

The methods they were presented with were on-farm risk reduction, and decontamination of carcasses using either hot water or steam or lactic acid. These were said to represent small risk reduction, medium risk reduction, and elimination of risk.

It is thought that approximately 10 out of 1000 pork carcasses contained Salmonella bacteria in 2005, and that some 2500 cases of human salmonellosis could be linked to

pork consumption that year.

We found that consumers were willing to pay for risk reductions, but they disliked all the risk reduction methods they were confronted with. Indeed, consumers were willing to pay a price premium for a complete elimination of Salmonella in minced pork but only if it was obtained at the farm level.”

The researchers said their findings pointed to a need to increase knowledge about consumer valuations of food borne risks and how they relate to the risk reducing technologies applied.

They said that the potential for technical solutions to increase public health depends greatly on how acceptable these methods are to consumers.

Source

Food Control (online ahead of print)

DOI: 10.1016/j.foodcont.2010.09.024

Consumers’ willingness to pay for safer meat depends on the risk reduction methods – a Danish case study on Salmonella risk in minced pork

Authors: Morten Raun Mørkbak, Tove Christensen, Dorte Gyrd-Hansen

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