http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=32894
Information about food, and especially its risks, flash before our eyes on a daily basis. But how effective and balanced is the information we get? EU-funded researchers believe that enhancing the delivery of information and advice on emerging food risks could help fuel consumer confidence in foods, curb economic losses related to food scares and reduce the number of illnesses linked to foods.
The FOODRISC ('Food Risk Communication. Perceptions and communication of food risks/benefits across Europe: development of effective communication strategies') project is working to offer consumers the right information they need about food/risk benefit relationships. Funded under the 'Food, agriculture and fisheries, and biotechnology' (KBBE) Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to the tune of EUR 2.97 million, FOODRISC is filling the gaps along the food information chain.
FOODRISC, which is coordinated by Professor Patrick Wall of University College Dublin's School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Science in Ireland, has pooled the resources of experts in key fields relevant to food risk and benefit communication, namely industry, academia, research institutes.
'Some of the recent "food scares", such as BSE [Bovine spongiform encephalopathy], Dioxin contamination in Belgium and Ireland and the case where milk was contaminated with melamine in China, have undermined consumer confidence in food,' explains Dr Áine McConnon of University College Dublin, FoodRisC project manager. 'With the food industry now being a global manufacturing and distribution business all possible forms of public communication need to be understood and used.'
The FOODRISC consortium is comparing how traditional and social media for news and information is disseminated in the EU, which in turn will lead to the creation of the effective tools the project seeks to give communication on food risks a huge boost. The new FOODRISC website is a step in this direction.
More specifically, social media use has ballooned in just a year, with numbers up by 50% in many countries. Facebook, which has taken the world by storm, has more than 570 million registered users, and the number of users of all types of social media currently tops the 1.25 billion mark. Europe has surpassed the US in the personal use of social media.
One of the objectives of the project is to establish a communication toolkit and best practice recommendations that will support organisations across the EU to offer better communication, information and education services to the public. The project partners say the toolkit will help policymakers, food authorities and other end users who seek to develop common approaches to disseminating information to European consumers.
Also on the FOODRISC agenda, say the partners, is the description of key configurations of food risk and benefit relationships and the implications for communicators. The consortium will assess how new social media, like Facebook, Twitter and blogs, can be used to provide guidance on how risk communicators can use these media to their advantage. And the partners will illustrate how consumers can attain, interpret and use information to support the target populations.
Kicked off earlier this year and scheduled to end in 2013, FOODRISC brings together experts from Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK.
For more information, please visit:
European Food Information Council (EUFIC):
http://www.eufic.org/
FOODRISC:
http://www.foodrisc.org/
To follow FOODRISC on Twitter, click:
here
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