Social media is not just for celebrity news and funny pictures of cats. It’s also a powerful way for food safety professionals to distribute information on possible risks and identify the spread of outbreaks at an early stage.
Providing accurate and timely information is, of course, crucial in helping to contain disease, protect consumers and avoid losses in food-chain sectors.
The EU-funded FoodRisC project recently published a study that highlighted the value of using social media alongside more traditional communications.
Tweet early and often
It was carried out by researchers from Ghent University and University College Dublin, and was co-ordinated by Prof Pat Wall of UCD. It advised that platforms such as Twitter and Facebook were useful for the quick and effective dissemination of information. (Learn more at foodrisc.org.)
Some food safety organisations have already been proactive in this area. Last year, the UK's Food Standards Agency embarked on a listening project on Twitter that it hopes could enable it to predict outbreaks of diseases, such as the winter vomiting bug, earlier than usual.
It found significant correlations between spikes in the number of lab reports of confirmed norovirus cases and spikes in conversations on Twitter that mentioned #winterbug, #norovirus and other keywords.
It also found that spikes in the use of symptom keywords, such as “puke”, strongly correlated to future lab cases.
#foodsafety
safefood uses social media to educate consumers, and to engage with scientists and researchers.
Dr Aileen McGloin, Communication Manager; Digital and Health for safefood, said, “safefood aims to positively affect health-related knowledge, skills, self-efficacy and ultimately consumer behaviour change around food safety.
“The way that people communicate, consume media, and seek and receive information is changing. The increase in digital, social and mobile media consumption gives us an unprecedented opportunity to connect with individuals on food safety issues.
“Digital gives us the potential to build credibility, trust, collaboration and advocacy, and helps us to encourage behaviour change.”
“Engaging in social media is not without risks, but these can be managed. Important first steps include the development of a social media policy and staff guidelines.”
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