What are you more concerned about, food safety or animal welfare?
This week an EU-survey found that Britons are more worried about animal welfare than food safety.
The survey was conducted for the European Food Safety Authority and it polled the opinions of nearly 26,700 people from Europe. This included 1,300 individuals from Great Britain.
In the study, more Britons announced concerns for the poor treatment of animals, such as cattle, than with the prospect of being poisoned by salmonella.
The Guardian has reported that high profile campaigns by famous chefs have contributed to the Britons’ concern with animal welfare. This is largely down to the success of TV shows like Jamie Oliver’s program ‘Fowl Dinners’, which set out to discourage people from eating battery-farmed chickens.
British and European statistics:
Only 7% of Brits were scored highly when asked if they were worried about food damaging their health. This is in comparison to 14% of Brits voting they were highly concerned that the economic crisis would negatively impact their lives.
67% of Britons were concerned about the welfare of farmed animals, compared to the EU average of 64%.
Britons are also typically less worried about pesticides, hormones in meat, additives, GM foods, food poisoning and salmonella, bird flu and BSE than our European counterparts.
Additional questions looked into public confidence and asked:
“How did you react to the last information you heard, saw or read
about a type of food being unsafe?“
Like our EU counterparts, around 35% of Brits avoided the food in the story for a while, whereas more European participants got worried but eventually ignored the problem, and a higher proportion of Brits simply ignored the concerns and didn’t change their eating habits.
Additionally, an alarming 53% (which is 24% higher than the European average) declared that even when they were told particular types of food were bad for their health, they ignored the warnings and didn’t change their eating habits.
It appears that the British public also distrusts messages on food safety from the media, with only 31% confident that newspapers, TV and radio would give accurate information about the risk. Almost 50% of European participants (on average) said they were totally confident in the information provided by their media.
You can view the reports here.
Tags: EU, European Food Safety Authority, Food Poisoning, Food Safety, report