Tag Archives: Survey

Fail: ‘Moms will change food-buying habits in 2013’

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Girls play hockey, boys can cook and shop for food.

Gender don’t matter much.

doug.sorenne.cook.dec.12But it does to Fleishman-Hillard, which sucks at public relations.

I’ve had some dealings with the PR behemoth over the past 20 years and always left wondering, why do people keep hiring them?

According to Fleishman-Hillard and TheMotherhood.com, 96 per cent of American mothers plan to make changes to their food-buying habits in 2013, according to some dumb-ass survey.

The low-lights, as reported by Media Post, say moms place higher priority on the opinions of bloggers and peers than that of experts like doctors and dietitians, and that moms use cooking sources such as AllRecipes.com (25%), Pinterest (19%) and FoodNetwork.com (15%).

Moms also rely upon food-based TV programs and the online counterparts of food magazines.

Cooper Munroe, co-founder of TheMotherhood.com, said, “Food brands must evaluate how … to deliver the right messages, mom to mom.”

I have five daughters. I do most of the shopping and food prep; my father has been doing the shopping and prep for decades (although he didn’t start out there); one of my brofriends in Australia braun.hockey.ontis a chef, with a PhD, who took a 40 per cent appointment to help raise his young daughters; we both see a lot of dudes at the places we shop for food.

The argument cuts both ways; by focusing on moms only, the survey geniuses – and the people who pay them – are missing half the market.

The survey folks would figure that out if they ever went to a grocery store.

Surveys suck: Canadians continue to have confidence in Canada’s food safety myths

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Canadians paid $93,000 for 1,009 of their fellow citizens to get probed.

A lot.

That $93,000 – and weeks of civil servant salaries – also reminded Canadians they were confident in Canada’s food safety system.

According to results from a recent study commissioned by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). 93 per cent of Canadians surveyed expressed a degree of confidence in Canada’s food safety system

I’m not sure what a degree of confidence is, but that didn’t stop Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz from proclaiming, with a straight face, “Canadians trust this government to protect the safety of Canada’s food supply and rightly so.”

The final, awful study Food Safety: Canadians’ Awareness, Attitudes and Behaviours PDF (2,024 kb) (POR 029-11) can be found on the Library and Archives Canada’s website at www.porr-rrop.gc.ca.

Specific objectives of the research included:

• probe Canadians’ views on the government’s food safety communications and provision of food safety information, including allergen information;
• probe Canadians’ understanding of food inspections and the role of a federal food inspector;
• probe Canadians’ understanding of the food safety system and the role of the CFIA;
• probe Canadians’ understanding of standards for imported foods and labelling; and,
• probe Canadians’ information needs and channel preferences.

 

Was your edumacation of any use? Public health survey for aspiring PhD

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Evan wants to know if health types investigating outbreaks of foodborne illness – or, as it’s initially described, a lot of people barfing, go figure out why – have any training. And if so, what kind of training was offered and whether it was any good.

Evan Henke, a PhD student at the University of Minnesota (right, pretty much as shown) wants to know this info to be able to summarize the typical training and work experiences of public health disaster responders in the U.S.

And get his PhD.

Evan writes, “To build the evidence base of determinants of health department performance, The University of Minnesota has developed an online survey for state and local epidemiologists and environmental health professionals involved in foodborne disease outbreak response in the U.S.

“The Institute of Medicine has long recognized the need to describe the organizational and environmental determinants of public health department performance. This need is intensified in programs related to public health emergency preparedness and response, where public health activities are critical to the mitigation of and recovery from disasters.

“Foodborne disease outbreaks are regularly recurring disasters requiring public health action including laboratory testing, epidemiological investigation, environmental inspection, and regulatory product traceback.

“Several determinants of public health performance for these activities have been proposed. In focus groups conducted in 2010 by the University of Minnesota, state and local foodborne disease responders identified predictors of performance including the following:

-Size of Jurisdiction
-Disease Reporting Laws
-Program Budget
-Organizational Structure
-Surveillance Processes
-Staff Training
-Staff Experience in Similar Disaster Response
-Inter-Professional Relationships and More

“If you are an epidemiologist or environmental health professional, please consider reviewing the survey consent and participating at the link below. The survey will require 15-20 minutes.”

https://live.datstat.com/DCSS-Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=FOBOS_Survey_1

This survey has been approved by The University of Minnesota Institutional Review Board (Study 1110E05746). If you have questions about the survey, please contact Evan Henke, PhD candidate at The University of Minnesota, at henk0071@umn.edu.

Self-reported food safety surveys still suck, especially web ones, IFIC 2006-2010

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Consumer attitudes toward food safety and their food-handling practices help to determine their risk of foodborne illness. The food safety questions in the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation Food and Health Survey have tracked these attitudes and self-reported practices using an annual, web-delivered survey each year since 2006, with more extensive food safety questions starting in 2008.

Participants were members of an online panel compensated with a point system by a survey company, were recruited annually, and reflected the latest Census data for the United States population on key Census characteristics, including age, gender, race, and level of educational attainment. Each year’s Survey included approximately 1,000 participants.

From 2008 to 2010, when the Survey included detailed food safety questions, participant confidence in the food supply increased (P = .000) and respondent reports of the following key food safety practices — hand washing (P = .001), washing cutting boards (P = .000), separating raw meat and poultry from ready-to-eat food products (P = .000), cooking to required temperature (P = .001), and properly storing leftovers (P = .000) — as well as following microwave cooking instructions declined (P ≤ .001).

White, more highly educated respondents, and respondents from households that included individuals who were particularly vulnerable to foodborne illness, were more likely to report following recommended food safety practices. Survey respondents reported using expiration dates (68%), ingredient listings (54%), allergen labeling (9%), organic labeling (16%), and country of origin labeling (16%) on package labels to make food purchase and consumption decisions.

Consumers used a range of sources for food safety information. The most trusted sources were government agencies/officials (39%), health professionals (37%), health associations (31%) and television news programs (31%).

Consumer responses show gaps in knowledge and implementation of food safety behaviors that can be addressed by food safety educators, and demographic differences documented by survey responses can help educators put their information into contexts that will make it more compelling. Food safety information needs to have consistent, actionable messages distributed through multiple delivery systems to reach target audiences.

International food information council foundation food and health survey, 2006–2010, food safety: a web-enabled survey
Food Protection Trends, Vol. 32, No. 6, Pages 309–326
Mildred M. Cody, Robert Gravani, Marianne Smith Edge, Carrie Dooher
and Christy White

Blame the consumer: while congratulating itself beef industry takes shot at consumers

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Is you is, or is you ain’t, my constituency?

The U.S. beef industry said last week beef is safer than it was 10 years ago, and cited survey data to show consumers agreed.

Surveys still suck.

“When asked whether someone is more likely to get sick from foodborne bacteria eating at home or at a restaurant, 65 percent of consumers answered “at a restaurant.” However, 72 percent of the experts attending the summit answered “at home.”

“In fact, statistics back up the experts’ opinion showing between 60 percent and 70 percent of foodborne illnesses occur at home.”

Got a reference for that? Or were the press release authors too busy inserting “dick fingers” and statements of nonsense like, “In fact.”

“In fact, it isn’t beef safety consumers are concerned about. When asked which fresh food they might buy in the supermarket was their biggest safety concern, 48 percent of consumers answered “Fish and Seafood.” Only 10 percent said beef was their biggest safety concern.”

Beef safety may have improved, but industry types can’t help but continue to cast stones. Beef types have lots to concern themselves with – non-O157 shiga-toxin producing E. coli, pink slime, cross-contamination, welfare and workplace issues — instead of wasting rhetorical energy about who’s to blame for foodborne illness.

It’s called playing to your constituency

Jacob, C.J. and Powell, D.A. 2009. Where does foodborne illness happen—in the home, at foodservice, or elsewhere—and does it matter? Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, 6(9): 1121-1123.?http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2008.0256
Foodservice professionals, politicians, and the media are often cited making claims as to which locations most often expose consumers to foodborne pathogens. Many times, it is implied that most foodborne illnesses originate from food consumed where dishes are prepared to order, such as restaurants or in private homes. The manner in which the question is posed and answered frequently reveals a speculative bias that either favors homemade or foodservice meals as the most common source of foodborne pathogens. Many answers have little or no scientific grounding, while others use data compiled by passive surveillance systems. Current surveillance systems focus on the place where food is consumed rather than the point where food is contaminated. Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.

Hundreds of NYC restaurateurs, or 4.2%, sound off on sanitary inspections

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The New York City Council will announce Wednesday that nearly 1,000 restaurant operators have responded, after only two weeks, to a Web survey seeking their views about the city health department’s new letter-grading system for food safety.

As of Tuesday, 965 responses had been submitted — a sign “that we’ve hit a nerve,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker. “We’re getting surveys from every borough, and from very diverse neighborhoods.”

Opinions expressed in the responses will be revealed in Council hearings scheduled for late February or early March. Responding to what the speaker said was “a wave of complaints” about letter grading, the Council posted a questionnaire on its Web site (www.council.nyc.gov) asking the city’s 24,000 restaurateurs to share information about their experiences with inspectors and administrative tribunals, and the cost of fines and inspection consultants.

Susan Craig, a department spokeswoman, said a survey last summer showed that 90 percent of New Yorkers approved of letter grading, and questioned the methodology and the validity of the Council questionnaire, which asks for but does not require the names of respondents. “The survey has no method of confirming that a participant is actually a restaurant, nor does it ensure that an entrant fills out only one submission,” Ms. Craig said. “The results — good or bad — will have negligible value.”

But Zoe Tobin, a Council spokeswoman, responded that “there is a vetting system in place” that checks for duplication and fraud. “We felt that anonymity was important to encourage candid responses,” she said.

A survey response rate of 4.2 per cent sorta sucks and isn’t representative of much.

We don’t need no education: burger preparation, what consumers say and do in the home

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I cringe when someone says, ‘food safety is simple.’

A review of existing studies by the U.K. Food Standards Agency found that, although people “are often aware of good food hygiene practices, many people are failing to chill foods properly, aren’t following advice on food labels and aren’t sticking to simple hygiene practices that would help them avoid spreading harmful bacteria around their kitchens.”

Yes, individuals are impervious to risk; been known for decades.

And there’s that word, ‘simple’ again.

I especially cringe when someone says, ‘cooking a hamburger is easy with these simple food safety steps.’

Ho Phang and Christine Bruhn report in the current Journal of Food Protection that in video observation of 199 California consumers making hamburgers and salad in their own kitchens, handwashing was poor, only 4% used a thermometer to check if the burger was safely cooked, and there were an average of 43 cross-contamination events per household.

There’s some good data in the paper about what consumers do in their own kitchens, and the results are an additional nail in the self-reported-food-safety-survey coffin: people know what they are supposed to do but don’t do it.

But what the paper doesn’t address is how to influence food safety behaviors. Instead, the University of California at Davis authors fall back on the people-need-to-be-educated model, without out providing data on how that education – I prefer compelling information – should be provided.

The authors state:

• educational materials need to emphasize the important role of the consumer in
preventing foodborne illness and that foodborne illnesses can result from foods prepared in the home.;

• the gap between the awareness of the importance of hand washing and the actual practice of adequate hand washing should be addressed by food safety educators.

• food safety educators should address the lack of reliability of visual cues during cooking (stick it in — dp);

• food safety educators should emphasize faucet cleaning with soap and water as a way of preventing cross-contamination; and,

• ignorance about food irradiation point to a further need for education.

The authors do correctly note that program to promote the use of thermometers when cooking burgers, initiated by the introduction of Thermy in 2000, has not been successful. So why do more education?

And the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers happened in Jan. 1993, not 1994 as stated in the paper; someone should have caught that.

Burger preparation: what consumers say and do in the home
01.oct.11
Journal of Food Protection®, Volume 74, Number 10, October 2011 , pp. 1708-1716(9)
Phang, Ho S.; Bruhn, Christine M.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2011/00000074/00000010/art00017
Abstract:
Ground beef has been linked to outbreaks of pathogenic bacteria like Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella. Consumers may be exposed to foodborne illness through unsafe preparation of ground beef. Video footage of 199 volunteers in Northern California preparing hamburgers and salad was analyzed for compliance with U.S. Department of Agriculture recommendations and for violations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Food Code 2009. A questionnaire about consumer attitudes and knowledge about food safety was administered after each filming session. The majority of volunteers, 78%, cooked their ground beef patties to the Food Code 2009 recommended internal temperature of 155°F (ca. 68°C) or above, and 70% cooked to the U.S. Department of Agriculture consumer end-point guideline of 160°F (ca. 71°C), with 22% declaring the burger done when the temperature was below 155°F. Volunteers checked burger doneness with a meat thermometer in 4% of households. Only 13% knew the recommended internal temperature for ground beef. The average hand washing time observed was 8 s; only 7% of the hand washing events met the recommended guideline of 20 s. Potential cross-contamination was common, with an average of 43 events noted per household. Hands were the most commonly observed vehicle of potential cross-contamination. Analysis of food handling behaviors indicates that consumers with and without food safety training exposed themselves to potential foodborne illness even while under video observation. Behaviors that should be targeted by food safety educators are identified.
 

Surveys – especially food safety surveys — still suck

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Public opinion surveys are built-in news stories: survey results garner attention for the sponsor and methodology is never questioned.

That’s why companies, organizations and governments continue to throw good money after bad to glean some insight into the consumer’s mind.

Today the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation – a cabal of food industry types – released its 2011 Food & Health Survey, and concluded that “while most Americans are confident and understand food safety is a shared responsibility, Americans are falling behind in regularly performing safe food handling practices. Although eight in 10 Americans report following safe food handling practices, the numbers continue to decline for washing hands with soap and water before handling food (79 percent in 2011; 89 percent in 2010; 92 percent in 2008)."

These numbers are ridiculously inflated and meaningless when observational studies in hospitals – where people are sick and dying and treated by professionals who should know better – peg proper handwashing compliance at something approaching 20 per cent.

But it’s a convenient way to blame consumers for outbreaks like salmonella in eggs. Or pot pies. Those microwavable thingies that consumers are supposed to use a thermometer to make sure they’re cooked.

“In addition, half of Americans (50 percent) do not use a food thermometer and 30 percent indicate nothing would encourage them to use a food thermometer.”

Based on observational studies, about 1 per cent of Americans use thermometers. Surveys are useless.

Go shopping instead; hang out with people. Shop at a variety of places and look at what consumers buy and when (usually when it’s on sale) and what they do in their kitchens.
 

People say they will pay more for safer food, will they? Someone needs to test at retail

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Willingness-to-pay studies are excellent indicators of what people think they will do in imaginary situations.

Willingness-to-pay studies are terrible indicators of what people will actually do at the grocery store.

Brian Roe, professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics at Ohio State University (isn’t that The OSU?) and Mario Teisl of the University of Maine report in the journal Food Policy, that based on surveys from 3,511 individuals, Americans would be willing to pay about a dollar per person each year, or an estimated $305 million in the aggregate, for a 10 percent reduction in the likelihood that hamburger they buy in the supermarket is contaminated by E. coli.

A monkey just flew out of Wayne Campbell’s butt (see video below from last week’s Saturday Night Live).

By comparison, a 2008 U.S. Department of Agriculture analysis estimated the value of eradicating a specific type of E. coli contamination from all food sources would result in a benefit valued at $446 million.

In the questionnaire, they set up six hypothetical scenarios around the purchase of either a package of hotdogs or a pound of hamburger. They set prices for the packages – both "status quo" foods and those treated with either ethylene gas processing or electron beam irradiation to reduce contaminants – and then laid out a variety of probabilities that the treated or untreated food packages contained contamination with either E. coli or listeria, another pathogen that can cause food-borne (sic) illness.

They followed by asking respondents to choose one of three actions: buy the food treated with the pathogen-reducing technology, buy their usual brand, or stop buying this product altogether.

The results showed that consumers will reach a limit to how much they want to pay to reduce their chances of getting sick. If the treated product cost only 10 cents more than an untreated package, about 60 percent of respondents said they’d buy the improved product. But when that higher price reached $1.60 more per package, less than a third would opt for the treated product.

The structure of the survey also allowed researchers to see the influence of human behavior and opinions on likely illness outcomes.

"If the food industry were forced to put technology in place that lowered the presence of E. coli and that ramped up prices to the extent where everybody had to pay about a dollar more out of pocket each year for hamburger, we’re saying that, according to this model, that would be about an equal tradeoff for the U.S. population. And if the technology costs only about 10 cents per person instead, that would seem like a good deal to most people," he said.

"If regulators could become more comfortable with this measurement process, agencies might change the way they conduct their cost-benefit analysis. And that would be an interest of ours, to see if our work and others’ work in this area will eventually change the way people attack these questions."

So it’s more about changing the way estimates are done. Estimates are lousy surrogates. I’m all for marketing food safety – at retail, food service, markets, everywhere. Brag about test results, use big signs, smart phone readers, just be able to back it up.
 

Kansas church dinner toll climbs

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There are now at least 159 individuals have reported becoming ill, with one hospitalization, following a Kansas church dinner earlier this month.

The Sacred Heart Turkey Dinner that was held on the evening of November 8, 2010, in Arkansas City, KS, had over 1,800 people in attendance.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) and City-Cowley County Health Department, with assistance from the Kansas Department of Agriculture and the cooperation of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Arkansas City, are continuing to conduct an investigation of a possible foodborne illness outbreak, and are asking for the public’s help in completing a survey to identify the source of the outbreak.

“It’s really important that everyone who attended the dinner or consumed food prepared for the event complete this survey or contact the health department,” said Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips, Kansas State Health Officer and Director of KDHE’s Division of Health. “Regardless of whether you’ve become sick, the information you provide will help us better understand what may have caused this gastrointestinal outbreak.”

The KDHE survey is available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SacredHeartDinner.