Communicating foodborne disease risk.

The food industry, like many others, has a risk communication problem. That problem is manifested in the public's desire to know the truth about outbreaks of foodborne diseases; ongoing concern about the safety of foods, additives, and food-processing procedures; and continued apathy regarding aspects of routine food hygiene. If these concerns are addressed in a coherent and trustworthy way, the public will have better and cheaper food. However, sloppy risk communication can itself cause public health damage. Because citizens are ill-equipped to discriminate among information sources, the food industry as a whole bears responsibility for the successes and failures of its individual members. We review risk communication research and practice for their application to the food industry.

[1]  H. Bursztajn,et al.  Medical Choices, Medical Chances: How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty , 1981 .

[2]  G. Paoli,et al.  Quantitative risk assessment: an emerging tool for emerging foodborne pathogens. , 1997, Emerging infectious diseases.

[3]  P. Slovic.  Perception of risk. , 1987, Science.

[4]  J. Rose,et al.  Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment , 1999 .

[5]  T. Gilovich,et al.  How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life , 1991 .

[6]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  Accentuate the Relevant , 1997 .

[7]  S. Krimsky,et al.  Social Theories of Risk , 1992 .

[8]  Howard Raiffa,et al.  Decision analysis: introductory lectures on choices under uncertainty. 1968. , 1969, M.D.Computing.

[9]  Karen A. Schriver.  Evaluating Text Quality: The Continuum from Text-Focused to Reader-Focused Methods. Technical Report No. 41. , 1989 .

[10]  O. Svenson,et al.  Perceived Risks of Radionuclides: Understanding Public Understanding , 1988 .

[11]  Mitchell J. Small,et al.  What information belongs in a warning , 1998 .

[12]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  Fault trees: Sensitivity of estimated failure probabilities to problem representation. , 1978 .

[13]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  Rating the Risks , 1979 .

[14]  L. Beach,et al.  Man as an Intuitive Statistician , 2022 .

[15]  William J. Burns,et al.  Covariance structure models and influence diagrams , 1993 .

[16]  J. Harley,et al.  Radionuclides in the Food Chain , 1988, ILSI Monographs.

[17]  L. Hasher,et al.  Automatic and effortful processes in memory. , 1979 .

[18]  M. J. Quadrel,et al.  Risk perception and communication , 2008 .

[19]  H. Wetzler,et al.  Risk /Benefit Analysis , 1983 .

[20]  B Fischhoff,et al.  Risk perception and communication unplugged: twenty years of process. , 1995, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[21]  C. Bruhn,et al.  Consumer concerns: motivating to action. , 1997, Emerging infectious diseases.

[22]  R. Keeney,et al.  Improving risk communication. , 1986, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[23]  Baruch Fischhoff,et al.  Characterizing Mental Models of Hazardous Processes: A Methodology and an Application to Radon , 1992 .

[24]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases , 1974, Science.

[25]  S. Link,et al.  Bias in Quantifying Judgments , 1989 .

[26]  Jerome R. Ravetz,et al.  Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy , 1990 .