Consumers’ awareness and information need about food hygiene in Korea: focused on pesticide residues and food borne illness

Abstract

This study investigated consumers’ awareness and information need about food hygiene especially focused on pesticide residues and food borne illness in Korea. The data were collected from 350 adults living in Daegu and Busan, Korea by a self‐administered questionnaire. Frequency and chi‐square tests were conducted by SPSS. The results of the survey were as follows: Firstly the consumers’ concerns about food hygiene were high. About three‐fourths of the respondents answered that they were ‘somewhat’ or ‘highly’ concerned about pesticide residues and food borne illness. Especially women and the older showed more concerns than men and the younger. Secondly, the respondents worried about eating vegetables, fruits and grains in turn because of pesticide residues, and did not trust the results from food hygiene tests by the Government. Thirdly, three‐fourths of the respondents used the way to wash food stuffs with water several times to clean pesticide residues. Fourth, about four‐fifths of the subjects worried about food borne illness caused by fish to the extreme and about two‐thirds answered that un‐fresh or contaminated food stuffs were the major factor of food borne illness in cooking. Finally, the respondents primarily wanted to get the information about harmfulness of pesticide residues in foods, and methods to choose fresh food regarding food borne illness. Under the situation of the lack of educational programs for food hygiene in Korea, the educational contents for food hygiene to improve public health can be developed on the basis of this study.

Attitude and consumption of Bangladeshi professionals toward biotechnological products

“…Moreover, education of the respondents was measured by the number of years of formal schooling successfully passed by the respondents where a score of one was assigned to a respondent for each year of schooling. The education of the respondents was categorized as a graduate (16), master's (18) and Ph.D. (21).…”

“…The selected nine learning media are interpersonal sources (friends, relatives, colleagues and biotech experts), group media (training, group meeting/discussion and workshop/seminar) and mass media (electronic media-radio/television; print media-newspapers/publications; and websites/ the Internet). Based on their score on the use of learning media, the respondents are classified into three categories which are a low user (< 12), the medium user (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24) and high user (> 24).…”

“…Sequentially, strongly agree and agree are categorized as agree, strongly disagree and disagree are categorized as disagree, and no opinion category remains unchanged in the response of the respondents. Moreover, participant's overall attitude towards biotech products was categorized into four categories by summation of all scores of the questions, which are unfavourable (< 20), neutral (21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), favourable (31-40) and highly favourable (> 40). Data show two nominal categories such as agree and disagree, which allows carrying out the Chi-square test compared to regression test.…”

“…China is still struggling with issues of consumer safety and acceptance, whereas many competing factors are putting pressures on policy makers to decide decision towards continuing of commercializing transgenic crops [15]. Most Korean consumers have been reported to be suspicious of the safety of biotechnological products, with 93% demanding the labelling of these foods [21]. Although there have been a number of consumers and farmers' studies conducted on knowledge, attitude and behaviour with regard to genetically modified (GM) foods in both developed [7,19] and developing countries [6,34] in the world, almost no studies have considered the factors that influence both the attitudes and consumption of Bangladeshi professionals.…”

Pamukkale University Faculty of Medicine students' knowledge and opinions regarding genetically modified organisms

“…Tıp fakültesi öğrencilerinin GDO hakkındaki bilgi, tutum ve davranışlarını belirlemek amacıyla yaptığımız çalışmamızda, yapılan diğer çalışmalarla paralel şekilde [9,10], öğrencilerin büyük çoğunluğu toplumun GDO'lar hakkında yeterince bilgilendirilmediğini düşünmektedir. Yapılmış birçok araştırma, tüketicilerin GDO'lar hakkında yeterince bilgilendirilmediği ve GDO'lu gıdaların "güvenilirliği" konusunda bilgilendirilmek istediklerini göstermektedir [11][12][13][14][15][16]. Özdemir'in yaptığı çalışma [17], tüketicilerin GDO'lar hakkında çoğunlukla medya yoluyla bilgilenmesine rağmen bilim adamlarının ve araştırma kuruluşlarının bu konudaki açıklamalarına güven duyduğunu ortaya koymaktadır.…”