Consumers’ food safety risk information-seeking behavior plays a vital role in improving their food quality and safety awareness and preventing food safety risks. Based on the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model (RISP), this paper empirically analyzes the food safety risk information-seeking intention of consumers in WeChat and influencing factors under the impact of food safety incidents. We use data from 774 WeChat users and apply the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. We also conduct multigroup analysis with demographic characteristics as moderating variables. The results demonstrated that: (1) Risk perception (p ≤ 0.01) has direct significant positive effects on consumers’ intention to seek food safety information. Besides, higher risk perception (p ≤ 0.01) regarding food safety risks will make people feel more anxious and threatened, and then expand the gap between the information they need and the relevant knowledge they actually have (p ≤ 0.1), which will further stimulate them to seek more information (p ≤ 0.05). (2) Informational subjective norms (p ≤ 0.01) can not only directly affect consumers’ information-seeking about food safety, but also indirectly affect consumers’ intention through information insufficiency (p ≤ 0.01). (3) The more consumers trust the relevant channels (p ≤ 0.01), the stronger their intention to search for food safety risk information. Moreover, the multiple-group analysis also shows that the effects of consumers’ gender, age, educational background, and average monthly earnings are different among different groups. Furthermore, implications are put forward for food safety risk communication efforts in China.

Food security and safety are central topics worth to be investigated by academicians and practitioners. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is more than a tool with wireless microchips for identification but a facilitator that increases the traceability of food products and better business model innovations. This paper reviews the literature of issues regarding RFID in the context of food supply chains (e.g. issues on the feasibility of RFID for better food traceability). We make a careful review of 13 papers published in 9 SSCI journals and conferences published from 2004 to 2016. Findings are discussed for offering suggestions that could improve the research streams and practices.

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Food export rejection can be a harmful barrier to sustainable international food trade. To understand China's export food rejected by FDA (Food and Drug Administration) of the United States, we analyzed 4047 cases of rejection from February 2011 to July 2017. Although the number of rejected food exported from China to the United States has been declining, and the quality has been improving, there is still space for improvement. Of the 4047 cases of rejection, the Guangdong, Fujian and Shandong provinces were the top three with the largest number of rejected food (1253 (31%), 520 (12.8%), and 508 (12.6%), respectively) (being rejected mainly in New York and Los Angeles). The top four types of rejected food involved fruits and vegetables, fishery and seafood products, bakery products, grain and related processed products. More importantly, the major reasons for rejection can be attributed to problems in maintaining food safety, namely: (1) the food contained filth, decay, decomposition or other substances; (2), the food contained toxic and harmful substances (e.g., suspected melamine, chemical insecticides, or lead); and (3) the food contained agricultural and veterinary drugs. The results are of great implications for the United States to regulate the imported food from China, and for China to improve the quality and safety of export food.