THE IMPACT OF THE MEDIA ON FOOD CHOICE
One of the central problems in nutrition is the difficulty of getting people to change their dietary behaviors so as to bring about an improvement in health. What is required is a clearer understanding of the motivations of consumers, barriers to changing diets and how we might have an impact upon dietary behavior. This book brings together insights from a number of sub-disciplines within psychology and related disciplines, in terms of what they can tell us about the influence on human food choice. It is organized into five main sections which cover: models of food choice; biological and learning influences on food choice; societal influences; food choices across the lifespan; and, changing dietary behavior. The contributors are all international leaders in their respective fields and together give an overview of the current understanding of consumer food choice. This book will be of significant interest to those researching nutrition, dietetics and psychology.
Introduction
An important question for health promotion, government and indeed the food industry is how the public understands media messages about the safety of foodstuffs and whether this impacts on the purchase, preparation and consumption of food (Miller and Reilly, 1994, 1995a,b; Reilly and Miller, 1997; MacIntryre et al., 1998). This chapter looks specifically at food ‘risks’ and public understandings of risk messages as assessed in work carried out at the Media Research Unit at Glasgow University. It has been argued that the effects of the media on public attitudes and behaviour are mainly negative. But such a view of the ‘malign’ influence of the media assumes that the media’s impact is straightforward and direct
(Eldridge and Reilly, 2003).
Consumers and especially children are perceived as vulnerable and thought to be at risk from media messages. The problem with such as view is that people do not passively absorb all media messages but rather they interpret and contextualize new information (Miller and Reilly, 1994). It can be argued that they do so in relation to a range of factors, including their own past history and experience, and deploy a range of assumptions on, for example, the credibility of information sources, before deciding what information to believe or reject (Reilly, 1998). This chapter discusses how the nature, content and route of provision of media information may affect perceptions of risks and impact on food choices. The main risks highlighted will be those around salmonella in eggs, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and genetically modified (GM) foods.
Methods
The first component of the research involved the analysis of media outputs on food risks from 1986 to 1998, which included both television and newspaper accounts.The result is a large archive on media coverage of food risks in Britain for that period. Certainly the influence of the media on public opinion cannot be predicted or assessed by a reading of media content alone, but access to a substantial archive does allow for the analysis of how stories appear and, more crucially, disappear from media agendas (Kitzinger and Reilly, 1997; Reilly, 1999, 2001).
Focus groups were convened across the UK to investigate how media messages were received, understood and acted upon by the public. These were carried out at different stages between 1992 and 1998. We studied ‘pre-existing’ social groups (people who knew each other through work, friendships or family connections) in order to preserve the ‘elements of the social culture within which people actually receive media messages’ (Eldridge et al., 1996). The sampling of the groups was purposive, and was designed to ensure the inclusion of a range of sociodemographic characteristics rather than to generate a representative sample of the general population (Reilly, 1997; MacIntyre et al., 1998; Philo and Reilly, 1998). We report here on a number of different aspects of the findings from the focus groups.
Within each focus group session respondents were asked to fill in a questionnaire (on biographical details and use of media products) as well as participate in a ‘news game’ (effectively writing their own news bulletin with the aid of still photographs taken from television programmes and newspapers relating to food). They then took part in a discussion about different food issues. The groups were 56% female and 44% male and ranged in age from 16 to 73 years. Seventy-nine per cent of the respondents read a daily newspaper and watched at least one television news programme regularly. More of the respondents read a tabloid newspaper (67%) on a regular basis. Regional tabloid newspapers were bought by a high percentage of respondents within each country: England (72%), Wales (65%), Northern Ireland (73%) and Scotland (71%). The majority of television news programmes watched were the early evening bulletins (74%).
BBC News was preferred by more people than ITN News or Channel 5 bulletins while a smaller number watched Newsnight (10%) or Channel 4 News (16%) regularly. Only 7% had ever purchased magazines specifically about food.
The ‘News Game’ Exercises
Respondents were given a set of photographs and asked to construct a news item about food. The photographs included images of government and opposition spokespeople, government officials, scientists, pressure group representatives, food industry officials, food producers, retailers and consumers. There were also pictures of different foodstuffs included such as eggs, meat, cheese, etc. and different food outlets. The exercises were used to show that respondents were familiar with the basic language and structure of news and that they did have good recall and understanding of a number of specific concerns about food. More than half of the stories written centred specifically on BSE. All of these were ‘negative’, in the sense that they were always critical of government, farmers or the food industry and concerned with a seeming lack of attention to ‘victims’.
Today the government announced that they were going to award the farmers of the UK a subsidy to help them overcome the hardships occurred since the BSE crisis of 1996. Roger Tallis, a farmer’s spokesman, claimed that the subsidy was not enough to cover the hardships suffered by the industry. Ronnie Richardson, whose wife died from CJD [Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease] said the victims deserved more compensation than the farmers. Frank Dobson, Health Secretary, commented that the question of compensation cannot be addressed until such times as the report from the BSE inquiry is completed.
(Local café workers, Inverness)
Despite the BSE crisis having emerged 10 years ago, history may show that successive agricultural and government policies have been ineffectual in establishing confidence in British beef. The public seem to have to rely on consumer and food programmes for update and information on the situation. Food safety is forefront in the public’s mind and many feel they are not being kept sufficiently informed. The more cynical observers among us tend to believe that money is the primary factor in this.
(Sports centre employees, Coleraine)
Families of the victims of CJD, the human form of BSE, were today in Parliament to tell the BSE inquiry their stories. While it has been 10 years since we were first told there was no risk from BSE and that infected meat would not get into the food chain, it has become clear that some people are getting this horrific disease who should not. Family lawyers said that it was the government’s responsibility to compensate the victims because it was their fault that BSE had been allowed to so infect the British food chain. They went on to say that it would be a travesty of justice if nothing were done about the victims of the BSE fiasco as the government had finally come out and admitted there may be a link between the two diseases.Stories written around genetic modification were based mainly on the fact that some products were on supermarket shelves and criticisms that the risks potentially associated with them had not been taken into proper consideration:
(Chefs, Swansea)
Food that we consider to be naturally ‘healthy’ is being genetically engineered for a longer shelf-life and cosmetic purposes, the long-term effects of which are not made available to the general public. Consumer watchdogs are concerned that the industry is veering towards profit rather than nutritional values of fresh food.
(Unemployed, Wishaw)
Genetically modified foods are now on our supermarket shelves. While the government have claimed that they are entirely safe to eat, consumer groups are concerned that yet again we are being put at risk from foods which have not been proven to be entirely safe. Following on from the problems with BSE in British beef it is clear that measures are going to have to be taken to ensure that the public are not being forced to purchase any of these products without their full consent. This means they should be clearly labelled at least and, more importantly, that research is carried out to reassure the public that there are no risks. The government have promised that it is taking consumer concerns very seriously, but until something more happens it seems that the public are simply not buying the stuff.A small number of stories were written specifically about salmonella or food poisoning in general. These tended to centre on the need for ‘proper’ hygiene and cooking practices:
(Nurses, Belfast)
Following a spate of recent food poisoning episodes of salmonella nation-wide, more advice is being given to consumers on how to ensure they say safe. An announcement made by Frank Dobson, Health Secretary, today stated that the public should be more vigilant in the preparation and cooking of certain foods. Top of his list came eggs and poultry which he said should always be thoroughly cooked, particularly when being served to children and old people. For the rest of us it seems that using common sense and not taking unnecessary risks by undercooking or improperly storing food is the main way of ensuring levels go down.
(Ancillary nursing staff, mixed, Bedford)
A report today said that food poisoning levels are on the increase in Britain because of the growth of small outlets such as cafes and food-vans. Consumers should take care when deciding where to buy fast-food from, and make sure that anything they do buy is properly cooked.There were a small number of stories that took a generalized look at food issues, incorporating a number of different ‘risks’ and, more specifically, the need to look into the costs of organic farming:
(16-year-olds, mixed, Oxford)
Surveys have shown that most food products on sale in supermarkets carry an element of risk because of additives, preservatives or, in the case of red meat, irresponsible methods of production. Frank Dobson, Health Secretary, and the Minister of Agriculture have recently met to discuss long-term plans to introduce healthier and safer food. Outcries have come from the general public about the cost of organically grown food. The two Ministers are hoping to obtain government funding to assist food producers with the aim of keeping prices realistic.Responses to Different Food Risks
(Crisis care workers, mixed, London)
The story of food safety as a public issue in Britain illustrates the important role different organizations play in helping to either discourage or encourage debate on food safety issues. It is certainly the case that most food safety ‘scares’ arose at a particular juncture in history for particular reasons. It is also the case that their rise and fall from the media can occur for a number of different reasons. There are a number of ‘news values’ which may be relevant to the appearance of food in the news sections (as opposed to food or health sections) of newspapers, television and radio. These are ‘scientific advances’, ‘divisions amongst experts’, ‘matters of state’, ‘division in the government’ and ‘government suppression’
(Kitzinger and Reilly, 1997; Eldridge and Reilly, 2003).
These criteria for newsworthiness have been in place for a number of the highprofile risk stories such as salmonella, BSE or GM food.
Salmonella in eggs
On 3 December 1988 the then Junior Health Minister, Edwina Currie, told ITN News:
we do warn people now that most of the egg production of this country, sadly, is now infected with salmonella. If however, they’ve used a good source of eggs, a good shop that they know, and they’re content, then there seems no reason for them to stop. But we would advise against using raw egg – mayonnaise and dressings and bloody mary’s and that sort of thing. They are not a good idea anymore.
(ITV, 3 December 1988)
Added to this were the more readily recognizable stories about outbreaks in, for example, restaurants, takeaways, hospitals, overseas holiday resorts and one in the House of Lords (May 1988). From January to the end of November 1988 there were a total of 263 national press and television stories about these issues. Seventy-four per cent of the stories were framed around individual consumers’ and food outlets’hygiene and cooking practices. The issue became relevant in policy circles because the number of cases of S. enteritidis reported in England and Wales had increased between 1981 (1087) and 1987 (4962; Public Health Laboratory Service annual report data).
By the end of 1988 over 12,522 cases had been reported, a third of all known salmonella cases. S. enteritidis PT4 had come to light first with the publication of research by the American Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in April 1988 (Dispatches, Channel 4, 25 October 1989). The CDC study claimed that salmonella was occurring in eggs, not only on contaminated eggshells but within the eggs themselves. The advice from the USA was that for complete safety from salmonella food poisoning, eggs should be boiled for a minimum of 7 min, poached for 5 min, or fried for 3 min on each side. This view was met with scepticism on the part of British health experts who claimed that the particular strain of salmonella in question, S. enteritidis PT4, was not commonly found in eggs in Britain. According to one Department of Health and Social Services spokesman, ‘there was no reason for any new advice about preparing eggs and chicken, beyond observing normal hygiene and ensuring both are thoroughly cooked’But enough concern was felt for the Department of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) to set up a joint government working party to investigate the rise in cases. In August 1988 the Department of Health issued a warning to hospitals about the risk of eating raw eggs (but not to the public and producers until November). Figures released by the department, based on data from the Public Health Laboratory Service, showed that some 21 cases of salmonella in 1988 had been linked to eggs (Guardian, 27 August 1988). More evidence of the problems with S. enteritidis PT4 appeared in a paper in The Lancet in September 1988. Then, on 2 December, Plymouth Health Authority took action and banned eggs from all of their hospitals. It was at this point that Edwina Currie made the issue public.
(The Times, 16 April 1988).
Instantly, a number of different interest groups, namely the Department of Health, MAFF and the egg industry, were forced to become involved in an issue of public concern with which they were not ready to deal. What Edwina Currie had unleashed, however unintentionally, was a number of problems associated with drawing public attention to a potential health risk which cuts across commercial interests. A number of very different positions were taken on this issue, as is clear from television news following Currie’s statement.
Advice to consumers from the Department of Health was that while eggs were a public health problem, individual eggs were unlikely to be infected. Precautions to be taken included stopping eating raw eggs or foods made with raw egg. While it was admitted there was a risk, it was seen as an ‘acceptable’ risk for healthy people to eat soft eggs. Those deemed vulnerable (i.e. the elderly, young children, pregnant women and those with lowered immunity levels) were advised to eat eggs that had been cooked until they were hard.The egg production industry demanded that something be done to restore public confidence in eggs, claiming that the Minister’s remarks were costing them £5 million per week and that the threat of bankruptcy loomed as many producers began to lose orders. The issue of blame became paramount. While it was a mark of government concern that a new voluntary code of practice for the egg industry was to be introduced, in the early stages of what would become known as the ‘eggs crisis’ blame was firmly put in the lap of the Minister who had brought the issue to light. MAFF blamed Edwina Currie, claiming that she had been ‘factually incorrect’ in her statement which had been made without consulting them. The egg producers threatened legal action against Edwina Currie and demanded a full retraction and/or her resignation for the damage she had done to the industry. But Currie refused to retract her words and was eventually forced to resign 2 weeks after making her statement following immense pressure.
(ITN News, ITV, 5 December 1988).
With awareness raised, the government had to respond very quickly to the problem. A committee was set up to investigate the salmonella affair. In addition, a damage limitation strategy was necessary as the main protagonists were at pains to ensure that public confidence in the egg was restored. Agriculture Minister John MacGregor’s department announced they would give half a million pounds to instigate a government advertising campaign to counter the scare. But a row developed as neither department could agree on how the advert should be worded. MAFF wanted it to say that eggs were safe to eat while the Department of Health would not agree to such complete assurances of safety. The phrasing of the 200-word statement was finally agreed and appeared to include the interests of both departments. It was generally criticized by the egg industry as being no more than a ‘health warning’ because it offered information on how to cook eggs ‘safely’.
With a national average drop of 60% in sales, a surplus of 20 million unused eggs daily, 100,000 chickens being killed and the threat of job losses, the industry demanded compensation. The government announced a £19 million package on 19 December but still no answers were given about the actual safety of eggs. It seemed that the scientific experts themselves were as divided as the politicians over the extent of the salmonella problem in eggs.
In the end it was left to the Chief Medical Officer to admit to the underlying uncertainties by saying that while Britain was suffering an ‘epidemic’ increase of S. enteritidis PT4 there was no clear scientific evidence to say that eggs were infected.
With Edwina Currie’s resignation and the compensation package offered to the producers, the political battle moved inside Whitehall and out of the public gaze. The affair may not have resurfaced but for media reporting in January 1989 of the House of Commons Agriculture Committee’s investigation, which gave the public a chance to hear the full story. The debates around S. enteritidis were reopened as representatives of MAFF, the Department of Health and the egg industry went to the committee armed with statistics which appeared to support their differing viewpoints. Contradictory evidence abounded but all parties seemed to agree on the fact that what Edwina Currie had said was wrong.
The public profile of these proceedings was also heightened by Edwina Currie’s refusal to appear before the committee to give evidence. Following three letters to her she eventually agreed to appear. She did not retract her statement and certainly did nothing to help clear up the question of the safety of eggs, saying that she had nothing new to add to the investigation. In fact, it was in an interview on Channel 4’s documentary programme Dispatches on 25 October 1989 that Mrs Currie said, for the first time, not that she had been wrong, but rather that she had ‘got the words wrong’. Up to this point she had refused to withdraw the remark ‘most of the egg production’; she now claimed that she did not intend to say ‘most eggs’, she should have said ‘many’ or ‘some’ or ‘a few’. Almost 9 months after the initial statement, it seemed still that no-one knew the precise answer.
While the committee collected evidence, food safety was undoubtedly high on the political and media agendas. The end of S. enteritidis as a high-profile public issue came with the publication of the Agriculture Select Committee’s report on the affair in February 1989 (House of Commons Agriculture Committee, 1989). The report criticized Edwina Currie but also put the affair down to a failure of government. They recommended that to deal with the complexity of the salmonella problem there needed to be more research and resources, the development of procedures for tracing food outbreaks, compensation for the slaughter of infected breeding and laying flocks, assurances that catering establishments used pasteurized eggs in all uncooked egg dishes, and a properly funded campaign to promote better hygiene in the home.
Following this, media interest in the story completely dissipated as a resolution to the affair was seen to have been reached, both at the political level and with the constant reminders to consumers of how to cook eggs ‘properly’. Egg sales also began to rise again slowly and were up to around 75% of earlier levels by early 1989 (Mintel, 1990). From 244 newspaper stories in January 1989, there were only 20 in the whole of April of that year. The issue was never again to enjoy such a profile in the British media. Interestingly, while media interest has undoubtedly diminished since 1988/9, according to Public Health Laboratory Service figures, cases of S. enteritidis were higher in 1997 than they were in 1988, accounting for 71% (22,806) of all salmonella cases reported, while the PT4 strain accounted for 47% of all enteritidis cases.
It is also interesting to note that the same warning about how to cook eggs was broadcast on television news programmes on 9 April 1998 with nothing like the same impact it had caused 10 years before. Why was this the case? There is a sense in which the salmonella affair was less a food ‘scare’ and more a political ‘scare’. What seemed most important at the time was the role played by both the Department of Health and MAFF, and the battle played out to assess who should be handling food safety.
Public understandings
While very high profile for a short space of time, our research found that instead of discussions of political conflicts within media formats, salmonella poisoning was seen most clearly as a cooking or storage problem. There was no real sense in which it was perceived as being a problem of industrialized agriculture.
This overall attitude fitted into the way salmonella stories had previously been presented by the media and health education/food safety materials. Respondents in our groups felt that there was a lot of information available that stressed how they could minimize the risks from salmonella poisoning, but that much of this was basic ‘common sense’:
It’s about common sense, isn’t it? Everyone knows that you have to cook food thoroughly and store it properly to ensure it’s safe. . . I always check the food pages in my magazines – they’re really good for giving out helpful information on good practices and how to make sure you don’t poison anybody.It was also consistently stressed that there were very practical ways of ensuring that you did not become infected with salmonella:
(Female, East Kilbride)
You don’t eat soft eggs and undercooked chicken, that’s the rule. I remember that from the Food and Drink programme and it has always just stuck with me.
(Male, Bristol)
I used to take quite a lot of raw egg, especially when I was training for running, but I wouldn’t do that anymore. I make sure everything is thoroughly cooked and won’t let the kids touch mayonnaise or anything like that.
(Male, Bedford)
I think we all know we have to be careful, and while you can be vigilant at home it’s harder to do that when you’re eating out. So, I’m really careful when I go out, I won’t have anything with eggs in just in case the place hasn’t been storing them properly or they’re out of date.It was commonly stated that ‘it was your own fault’ if you ate out-of-date eggs, sandwiches or other related foodstuffs and the same applied if people ate from what was seen as unhygienic premises (mostly fast-food outlets such as snack vans). It was interesting that while respondents all remembered the Edwina Currie egg story, none was aware that advice relating to the cooking of eggs remained the same as it did in 1988 or that the same warning (about cooking and storing of eggs) was reissued in April 1998 given the rise in cases of the PT4 strain. While there was a great deal of surprise at this information, there was no major level of concern from any of the groups. This was mirrored by the lack of media coverage at the time.
(Female, Coventry)
Factors determining public responses to salmonella
Most respondents had been eating eggs for a long time and had never been poisoned, or at least did not relate such poisoning to eggs:
I didn’t know that at all, but then I follow that advice anyway, always have. I think I remember the cook eggs for seven minutes advice from the medical officer guy at the time because I have kids, and you they’re one of the risk groups aren’t they... but I don’t worry unduly about salmonella because as I said, we’re very careful about cooking chicken and eggs.
(Male, Omagh)
I wouldn’t really be bothered too much if the media came out and said there were problems with eggs. I mean they did it before and nothing happened, I mean I’ve been eating eggs all my life and have never been poisoned by one.It was interesting that this was particularly the case for ‘older’ groups who are one of the main risk categories in relation to food poisoning. Asked how they would react if the media highlighted a potential problem with salmonella, most respondents said that they would take advice offered by the chief medical officer or scientific advisor. They made it clear that they would not accept information from politicians (from any party) on food safety issues as politicians were most commonly seen as having an agenda that was not in consumers’ interests.
(Female, South Uist)
I would have to say the chief medical officer, I mean that’s what he’s there for, isn’t it? I don’t think they should let the politicians come on and tell us what’s safe or not because let’s face it, nobody believes a word any of them say, do they?
(Female, Dover)
It’s up to the public health people and the scientists to tell us what’s right and wrong with food and what precautions to take. If you let the political people do it then there’s always the thought that they’re trying to cover something up, or make sure the farmers don’t lose any money.
(Male, Aberdeen)
It’s all about money, about making sure that markets don’t collapse. I think that there aren’t enough people about taking the consumers’ side in all these issues, it was like that with the Edwina Currie story. All I can remember is seeing loads of farmers and politicians shouting about how much it was all going to cost.
(Male, Dundee)
Salmonella was discussed in relation to eggs and foodstuffs associated with them (mayonnaise, etc.) and chicken. It was also commonly discussed in relation to Escherichia coli (particularly within the Scottish groups). Concerning those who mentioned E. coli, it was interesting that people removed from the problem (not actually affected) discussed E. coli as a hygiene/contamination problem in the same way they discussed salmonella. The two separate issues were seen as being ‘the same type of thing’.
In contrast, those most affected – i.e. a group in Wishaw where the outbreak occurred – discussed it in relation to poor production standards (still a hygiene issue but one occurring in a different institutional context). This group of people were remarkably supportive of the butcher’s shop involved in the outbreak and claimed that the owner had become a ‘scapegoat’ for what was in reality a bigger problem. One respondent in this group who had been hospitalized by the outbreak and spent a number of days in intensive care was adamant about his support for the butcher and had not stopped eating cold meats once he was out of hospital.
An anecdote from this respondent was that when he was removed from intensive care into a general ward the first meal provided for him was a cold-meat salad, which the rest of the group found very amusing. What this poisoning outbreak had done for these respondents was to (in their words) ‘politicize’ them about food. They stated that had E. coli not occurred in their town none of them would have paid half as much attention to information on BSE. This point reinforces other research findings which suggest that personal experience is one of the most important features of determining how people may react to particular risk information.
The most influential sources of information in relation to salmonella were women’s magazines, which were seen to be sensible, ‘non-hysterical advice’, and cookery programmes. It was suggested that if these programmes all used eggs in their recipes commonly people would be more likely to assume that they were indeed a safe source of food. Delia Smith was referenced extensively as was Ready, Steady, Cook, which was seen as offering advice as well as recipe ideas. Because actual chefs were using particular foodstuffs respondents were more likely to be reassured of their safety.
If you see the like of Ainsley or whoever cooking these things then you think, right, it must be alright then. I mean they’re hardly going to be using risky foods in their shows because if anything bad happened it would ruin their reputation.
(Male, East Kilbride)
I go by the women’s magazines and I watch loads of cookery programmes, so I think I have a fairly good idea about what to do and what not to do. I think these things are really useful because it’s a simpler clearer way of finding out things than watching the news, which is all negative. I mean, I find much more helpful to actually see people preparing food and getting hints on how to make sure there aren’t any risks.
(Female, Lurgan)
Its really funny on that Ready, Steady, Cook programme because you see the chefs sometimes fluffing it up by using a chopping board to cut a vegetable when they’ve just used it for meat – and that Fern comes over and says, ‘Now now, you know that’s not allowed’. I think that’s quite good because it is funny but you will remember that you aren’t supposed to do that.This is potentially a very important point in relation to the communication of risk information, particularly since these programmes were cited as being useful in helping people to decide whether to continue to eat beef following the outbreak of BSE.
(Female, Portsmouth)
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy or ‘mad cow disease’
In April 1985 a vet was called out to see a cow in Ashford, Kent. The animal was panicky and aggressive, began drooling and falling over. The vet assumed the cause was a brain tumour, put the animal down and thought nothing more of it. That is, until he was called back to the same farm to see a second cow with the same symptoms. More cases followed. He discovered that the brains of the animals had a spongy texture similar to those of sheep infected with scrapie. He called in the local MAFF vet, and in November 1986 the Central Veterinary Laboratory in Surrey confirmed what was thought to be the world’s first case of spongiform brain disease in cattle.
MAFF took complete control over all aspects of BSE. It was not until June 1986 (7 months after the first diagnosis) that MAFF informed ministers of the new outbreak and a further 10 months elapsed before the government moved to have the threat assessed. MAFF also attempted to keep the nature of the disease to itself for as long as possible. When MAFF finally announced the existence of the new disease in October 1987 it did so in the Short Communications section of The Veterinary Record (journal of the British Veterinary Association).
The government also kept tight control of information on BSE and journalists were given very little information. The very strictness of the official government line meant that those who disagreed with it had to find ways of communicating their ideas. So, willing alternative experts could easily be found and used as a balance to what little official information was being offered. This allowed the debate to widen and introduced a conflict at the level of science over the behaviour of the BSE agent and its potential consequences for animal and human life.
At the centre of this whole issue was the role of science. Had more been known about the BSE agent, clearer statements about diagnosis and treatment could have been made. But what quickly became obvious was that until scientific uncertainties about mad cow disease were cleared up, reassurances about the safety of British beef were not entirely convincing, and no firm resolution to the problem could be reached. The main debate centred on the science of BSE and whether, through contamination via infected bovine products, it could be passed to humans.
There has always been a theoretical risk that BSE could pass in this way. However, while many ‘experts’ on the subject have admitted to the possibility (however unlikely or remote they believed it to be), politicians did not, publicly at least. The message that was always highlighted by government was: ‘There is no risk to humans’.
BSE remained in the public sphere because controversy surrounded the subject. In April 1988 the UK government set up a committee (Southwood) to assess the significance of the new disease. The committee reported that: ‘the risk of transmission of BSE to humans appears remote and it is unlikely that BSE will have any implications for human health’.
But they also added,if our assessments of these likelihoods are incorrect, the implications would be extremely serious ... with the long incubation period of spongiform encephalopathies in humans, it may be a decade or more before complete reassurances can be given.
(Southwood et al., 1989)
In the government press conference held to highlight the report it was stated: ‘the report concludes that the risk of transmission of BSE to humans appears remote and it is therefore most unlikely that BSE will have any implications for human health’The Southwood committee had wanted 75% compensation for those farmers with infected cattle (fearing they might sell them, send them to market quickly, or destroy and bury them privately). But the government disagreed, and the farmers had to settle for 50%. In July 1988, John MacGregor, then Minister of Agriculture, stopped brains and offal being fed to cattle and sheep.
(BBC News, 27 February 1989).
Inevitably, the next question to be asked (by the health department and opposition party) was about human food. While animals were no longer eating specified offal, there was no such legislation for humans. Pre-clinical BSE cattle were still going into the national food chain as if they were healthy animals. Brains, spinal cord, spleen, thymus, tonsils, intestines and bits of spinal tissue in ‘mechanically recovered meat’ were being used in a variety of products such as burgers, meat pies, pates, lasagne, soups and stock cubes, and baby foods.
In early 1989, the official government view was that the removal of offal from human food was completely unnecessary. By March 1989 MacGregor was asked to ban human consumption of any organs known to harbour infectious agents. In May of that year, Hugh Fraser, from the Institute of Animal Health and one of the most senior researchers at the time, said on Radio 4’s Face the Facts programme that he no longer ate bovine offal, and that it would be prudent if suspect tissues were removed from human consumption. This was finally done in November 1989.
Other factors ensured that BSE would remain a high-profile issue. There was already a well developed interest in food safety because of salmonella and listeria, which were high-profile public issues throughout 1988/89. By 1989, other countries began to be interested in the disease (Australia had already banned British beef cattle exports in July 1988). Germany, Italy and France banned British beef imports. The issue, in British terms, became political and economic. European countries claimed they were protecting the public health.
John Gummer, the next Minister of Agriculture, treated this as powerful vested interests playing at protectionism. In Britain, local councils began banning British beef from the menus of 2000 schools. Then the death of a domestic cat from a spongiform encephalopathy caused alarm, opening the debate on transmission and bringing the potential threat to humans a little closer to home. Early on in the crisis John Gummer took a close interest in the presentations of MAFF.
He became the pre-eminent spokesman on BSE and Ministry vets were therefore not at the forefront of any public relations efforts. By 1990 BSE was the biggest story on the news. The government was forced into action. As part of a move to try to restore public confidence in beef they instituted a ‘Beef is Safe’ campaign. One of the most memorable aspects of the media campaign was Gummer’s attempt at banishing ‘mad cow hysteria’ by feeding a beef-burger to his young daughter. Surprisingly enough, it did not work, and concern mounted.
Yet the BSE story could not be sustained on a day-to-day level in news terms. Government inaction can cause uproar but that will die down when officials are seen to be doing something about it. This was clear when we see how BSE began to disappear from the media agenda once Britain had some success in stopping European bans on beef in 1990. While media coverage of BSE all but disappeared after 1990/1, the disease (as with salmonella levels) did not go away.
Although there was a certain amount of media interest in the intervening years, it was not until March 1996 that a full-scale attack on this assessment of risk was heard. The fading interest had nothing to do with a change in MAFF activity, nor any kind of scientific resolution, nor a decline in the spread of BSE. Rather, coverage reduced because there was a resolution of sorts on a political level. A compromise solution was instituted that reinstated beef imports to Europe so long as they were certified to come from BSE-free herds.
However, the central issue of human transmission was not resolved by the European Community decision. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the outstanding scientific uncertainty, the decline in coverage towards the end of 1990 was sustained for the next 5 years, with only the occasional minor peak. BSE retained the potential to re-emerge as a high-profile media story but required further scientific evidence or renewed official action. At this stage, MAFF efforts to control the issue were actually quite effective. But also because MAFF attempted to keep such tight control over information on BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), alternative media sources were found, and ‘experts’ as such created. Behind the scenes, sources used by the media would be scientists, researchers and organizations such as the British Veterinary Association.
In this way questions that were not being asked at other levels could be addressed. The highlighting, for example, of conditions and practices within slaughter houses changed the issue from whether bovine offal was being removed to how effectively or safely this was being done. An Environmental Health Office (EHO) document sent to MAFF in February 1990 had pointed out that poor practices were evident (Guardian, 28 April 1991). They received no reply from the Ministry. It was only in 1995 (6 years after implementation) that MAFF took steps to tighten controls on slaughter house practices. Had the media not brought research into poor hygiene and clear breaches of regulation into the open, then work e.g. by the EHO might have gone unnoticed.
The general low level of media interest in Britain during 1991–1995 was due, in part, to the feeling that BSE had exhausted its news value. There were also very few new events to maintain a momentum of media concern. While a number of journalists remained intensely interested in BSE, they fell foul of editorial decision making and the demands of news. As one journalist we interviewed said:
Scientists continually said ‘we don’t have the data, we need further research’ . . . so we tended not to write about it . . . It just doesn’t make very good copy, to simply say ‘we don’t know, we need further research’, ‘we can’t answer that’. However honest that is, it doesn’t play very well in terms of headlines.At the same time the lack of policy activity meant that editors lost interest in the subject because ‘nothing was happening’. This reaction frustrated some journalists, because, as one broadsheet specialist pointed out: ‘Of course that was the whole point, nothing was happening to destroy this thing; but in newspaper terms I wouldn’t be given the space to say that every day or every week’. Simultaneously, MAFF caution over what could be said in public minimized the chance that official sources would make controversial statements. For example, official experts who were taking precautions were not prepared to say that in public:
(Broadsheet journalist, interviewed 1995)
As far as we know at the moment there doesn’t seem to be a risk to humans. While I personally don’t believe that there ever will be, we just don’t know at the minute, but that’s science for you. [JR: ‘So, do you eat bovine offals at all?’] Well, no I don’t actually. But I could never say that in public because I shudder to think what the media would make of it. And I don’t think that it would be very sensible professionally given the highly emotive nature of the subject.While clear pronouncements about safety were being made to the public, new CJD cases had started to appear in 1994, when there were six, and continued in 1995. The most important aspect of them was that they were similar both in clinical symptoms and in the pathological damage that appeared in the brain. John Pattison, head of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), suggested that projected cases of BSE in humans, calculated on current information, could represent a major public health problem.
(Official expert, interviewed 1995)
By the end of 1995 ten new cases of CJD had appeared in younger people (under 42 years). Under Pattison’s headship SEAC decided that the news had to be made public. The announcement led to an explosion of media coverage, even exceeding the previous peak of interest in 1990. While public health interests were finally brought into play, government failure to deal with BSE adequately earlier was all the more strongly criticized and European interventions were dramatically strengthened in 1996 with demands for a worldwide ban on British beef and a major culling policy.
Going public with information on a new strain of CJD changed the nature of the BSE debate. Health interests were brought into play. While SEAC made recommendations that the ‘risk’ to humans from food would probably be small if there were better controls on offal, and more rigorous enforcement of those controls,Prime Minister John Major was seen on television saying that beef was ‘entirely safe’ and that this ‘had been confirmed by British scientists’
(PM, 23 April 1996).
There is a sense in which lessons have been learned from BSE. Government is now seen to be at some level more open. For example, data from the BSE inquiry, set up to investigate how it happened, are accessible to the public. Confidence in British beef is seen to be returning. But all of this has come at a cost.
Factors determining public responses to bovine pongiform encephalopathy
Reactions to BSE within our groups were conditioned by a number of factors. Initially respondents discussed their reactions to the announcement in 1996 of a potential link between BSE and CJD. It was clear that respondents felt strongly about the issue of BSE, specifically about how it had been handled and the number of years they had been ‘kept in the dark’ about the potential risks. Discussion on BSE centred on the loss of trust in government experienced by people and how attitudes to food had been radically altered by the BSE crisis:
Well, they let it happen didn’t they? All they wanted was to make sure everybody kept on buying meat without a single regard for our safety. The whole thing was a complete fiasco and I hope someone actually pays for that.
(Male, Inverness)
Nothing will ever be the same again I think, we are now in a post-BSE world and that means that what you may have ignored or not thought much about before has become central. . . and I don’t just mean about the actual food, I think this issue highlighted quite radically how our political institutions work and who they are most concerned about, and what came out is that it isn’t us.
(Female, Bristol)
I never really thought that much about what I ate before BSE, but there comes a time when you have to take on board the fact that not everyone’s interest are going to be served by the political system, and the public are certainly not very high on British governments’ priority lists. It’s a trust thing, you think they’re there to keep us safe as far as possible, and then you learn that what they are there for is to keep the food industry and farming safe.
(Male, London)
If they hadn’t have said there was no risk at all for all those years then I don’t think it would have been so bad. I mean, was there really a need to keep the potential problems covered up like that? How stupid do the government think we are? And that’s the thing, they think we’re stupid and don’t trust us to make sensible decisions. Well all that BSE has done has shown me that I can’t trust these people to ensure that what I’m eating is safe and that they’ve treated the whole nation like fools.While there was commonly a clear attitude that what BSE was about was a failure of government, the issue of continued consumption highlighted the contradictions between believing something and changing actual eating practices. There were very different attitudes to the level of risk associated with eating beef. This is not to say that respondents had stopped eating beef or beef products. Levels of concern about actually consuming beef differed radically. Some respondents stated that they had removed certain foodstuffs from their diet, most notably burgers, sausages and pies. This was particularly the case for those respondents who had children. But, on the whole, while the belief that a link between BSE and CJD was held to be true, more complex reasons were at play in relation to whether individuals continued to buy beef:
(Male, Coleraine)
I still eat beef yes, I don’t eat burgers anymore but that’s mainly because I didn’t know what was in them. The kids aren’t allowed to eat them either but I don’t have a problem with steak because I don’t think you can get it from that. [JR: ‘Why not?’] It was on that documentary about BSE a while back, the one that was on for about three weeks. One of the scientists said that the risk was miniscule from steak and I just thought well, I’ll keep eating it then.
(Male, Edinburgh)
Well, I haven’t stopped eating anything at all, I was one of those ones who was out buying the fillet steak when it was all being sold off cheap . . . I do think there is a link between the two diseases but I’ve always been a big meat eater and I suppose I’ll have taken the risk loads of times, there’s no point stopping now.
(Female, Lurgan)
It’s banned from our house, all of it, except that is Scottish beef, I will eat that. I think I wanted to stop altogether but that’s dead hard when you really like something so I decided to check out the things that were seen as being safe, and the papers were always talking about how Scottish beef was safest so I decided to move to that.
(Male, Perth)
I didn’t really think about stopping because we were always told that there wasn’t a problem here [Northern Ireland] because of the computerized system we have in place to check where animals are coming from and going to. When I went to England though I wouldn’t eat it, no chance, it’s not worth the risk.It became clear that this was the first issue in which there were clear differences between groups, particularly in relation to their geographical location. Where people came from was a particularly important factor in determining whether they were concerned about the risks associated with BSE. The groups in Northern Ireland all said that ‘their beef’ was by far the safest and claimed that they felt safe continuing to eat it. Asked why they thought their meat was ‘safer’, these respondents stated that both media (particularly local media) and advertising in shops selling meat were the main reasons:
(Male, Belfast)
We don’t have BSE here, its all English and Scottish stuff that’s the problem. We know that because it’s always on the news, that we have a proper system in place which can say where all the animals have come from.
(Male, Omagh)
You see it advertised everywhere, this is Northern Irish beef, it’s in all the butchers and supermarkets. So, you don’t really think there’s a problem as long as you know that it’s definitely from here.
(Female, Belfast)
They tell you on the news that if you ask the butcher he should be able to say what farm the meat has come from and that it’s BSE-free. You can’t ask for more than that now.Very few of the people in the groups had stopped eating beef altogether. One nurse in Belfast stated that he had stopped because of CJD. His concern centred on the nature of the disease and it was this which made him decide to stop. As he said:
(Male, Coleraine)
I just thought, no that’s a really horrible disease. No cure, people have a nightmare time, I’ve seen them. I thought what if you can get this from eating burgers or whatever, it’s just not worth it. So I just thought, no, I’m not taking that risk. It’s funny, I’m not usually squeamish but this just made me feel really odd, like, I could give this to myself and I definitely don’t want CJD I can tell you.It was interesting that the rest of this group found his reasoning amusing and made comments on the risk associated with CJD as opposed to other life-style habits:
(Male, Belfast)
You’re an eejit, do you know that? You do more risky things to yourself every day. I mean you smoke like a trooper and, let’s face it, you’re always in the pub. What on earth makes you think you’re going to get CJD, I mean hardly anyone gets it, it’s really rare, even the one associated with meat.
(Female, Belfast)
I don’t know, I can’t really explain it really. I just know that I have seen people with CJD and it’s horrible.While in Scotland respondents argued that ‘their’ beef should have the same mark of safety as Northern Ireland had, here respondents discussed BSE in much the same way as in both Wales and England. Most of the respondents said that while they had not actually stopped eating beef they had become more careful about choosing particular products and particularly more aware of where it came from. What did become clear in all groups in association with BSE was that individuals initially blamed the media for creating a ‘scare’, but following the 1996 announcement the media was more likely to be used as a trusted source of information by respondents (Reilly, 1999).
(Same male)
Genetically modified foods
Following on from BSE, the debate over GM foods was next to become high-profile. We carried out focus groups in early 1998 where none of the respondents knew anything about genetic modification. It was clear that they had not picked up any information appearing within media formats on the subject. In these groups there was very little discussion of this issue, and when respondents attempted to talk about it there was a general sense of confusion in relation to the issues involved:
I have no idea about that kind of thing at all, sorry.
(Male, Edinburgh)
Is it a big media story then? I haven’t seen anything about it, I would’ve remembered if I had.
(Female, Carlisle)
I know it’s something to do with genes, about putting genes from one thing into another, but that’s it, I’m afraid.
(Female, Milton Keynes)
I haven’t the faintest idea, and I don’t think I want to know to be honest.
(Male, Bristol)
I’ve read a bit about it, about us not wanting the stuff on the supermarket shelves. I think its coming from Europe isn’t it, they don’t want the stuff.None of the respondents knew whether there were any products already being sold to them and wouldn’t know what to look out for were they to check. When asked where they might go to get information if they were concerned, most of the respondents in these groups stated that they would contact a consumer group. At this stage though there was no real concern about genetic modification and no real interest by any respondents in learning more about the issues:
(Female, East Kilbride)
I’ve too much to do to be bothered about something I haven’t even heard of. It’ll probably all blow over.
(Female, Carlisle)
I’m not concerned about that stuff, it’s all too up in the air and I don’t really understand anything about it. If there is a problem with it I’m sure we’ll hear about it soon enough, we always do.
(Male, Aberdeen
I think we’ve had about enough about food scares for the present. We’re all still getting over the BSE thing.
(Female, Nottingham)
GM food began receiving increasing media coverage specifically from 1996 for a number of reasons. First, they are here – the crops are being grown and the products are on supermarket shelves. This is an important factor in whether issues will be covered as mainstream media formats which deal, on the whole, in ‘news’ (i.e. something which has happened) rather than speculation (i.e. something which may happen in the future).
Second, there were growing and concerted attempts by pressure groups (both environmental and consumer) to get GM food and crops on to the political agenda via the media (and more recently, efforts by industry to clearly get their perspective across in the face of perceived public mistrust over GM products). A clear disparity between public and both industry and official perceptions of relevant issues relating to GM food and crops was emerging which came to the fore in mass media coverage.
Third, for a number of reasons Britain’s reputation as a quality food producer had been tarnished. In the post-BSE era trust in both industry and political institutions was seen by the media to have been seriously damaged. BSE was one of the biggest and long-running high-profile media issues and serious analogies between that and the potential risks and uncertainties surrounding GM food and crops were inevitably going to be highlighted.
While the mass media began paying increasing attention to GM foods, coverage on the whole did remain selective. Newspaper coverage, for example, remained predominantly report-based. Sixty-four per cent of coverage was report-based ‘news-led’ (i.e. based on scientific discoveries, agricultural, business news, law and regulation). These were found most commonly in the agriculture, science and business news pages of newspapers. The vast majority of coverage appeared in broadsheet newspapers with tabloid coverage making up only 10% of items. (If we look specifically at the low-range tabloids such as the Sun, the Mirror and the Daily Star, this figure goes down to only 3%.)
Newspapers are not the ideal format for huge features on the future of science in the 20th century. A new discovery may be reported, but there is seldom time to research the subject more fully. In general, under pressure of deadlines, journalists will give priority to official/scientific sources. In saying that, in relation to genetic modification there has been an increasing amount of space for longer articles, feature and editorial articles where issues can be critically discussed and assessed.
These constituted 23% of newspaper stories in 1998 (these types of stories constituted 15% of coverage in 1995). This increase was due primarily to the appearance of GM products on supermarket shelves and because of the legal and agricultural changes that had occurred because of GM crops. It was also because there had been a growing debate in general on food issues such as BSE and E. coli. While there were a number of papers which were questioning the risks and benefits associated with GM food before March 1996 (most notably in the Guardian, the Independent and the Observer), the vast majority of feature coverage centred on the uncertainties associated with these technologies and problems perceived with a lack of proper regulation.
One point to mention here is the fact that coverage has largely been determined by the nature of the sources used. GM food (until 1999) was an issue that had no central ‘official’ spokespeople (whereas with BSE there were official sources seen to dismiss risks). This meant that the debate developed with the opposing interests of pressure groups and industry, producers and supermarkets at the fore. At the same time newspapers took particular lines on advances, particularly in editorial pieces where the views of the public are aired (this is most clearly seen in the Guardian and the Observer in particular, where a lot of debate on whether ‘we’ need or want GM foods has taken place).
The development of the debate in this way has impacted at different levels. For example, it seems that the companies producing GM products did not sufficiently take into account ‘negative’ media coverage around consumer groups and EU concerns over maize and soya that had been building up in newspapers since July 1996. By October of that year headlines were reading like this: ‘Controversy around new GM crops may have caught biotech companies by surprise’ (Financial Times, 15 October 1996). Yet the controversy and uncertainties around the use of GM foods had not come out of the blue. As far back as 1990 negative media coverage about approval for use of a GM brewer’s yeast was in part blamed for the fact that the product was not put on the market.
In 1997 the debates began to become more centred on particular subjects. Labelling became the central issue (taking up 40% of coverage in that year). As more products entered into the food market it was becoming clear that opposition to these products was becoming more organized (differences in the type of coverage between the entry on the market of tomato purée in 1996 as opposed to soybeans and tinned tomatoes where the labelling of products and needs of consumer choice had become central to media debates; it is worth noting that consumer and food pressure groups were three times more likely to be interviewed for reports than industry officials and five times more likely than government officials).
From January to June 1997 GM food and crops were becoming a political issue and as such received extensive coverage on the political pages of the major newspapers. The introduction of EU laws over labelling and patenting dominated this type of coverage. Following the introduction of EU approval for the labelling of genetically altered products in June, media coverage returned to the science, agricultural and consumer pages.
On television, news reports are – as in newspapers – short articles which are event-driven. BBC and ITV news programmes do not have the time for in-depth coverage and so items were more likely to be found on either Channel 4 news or
Newsnight, with television news items constituting only 10% of all coverage (both television and newspaper) from 1995 to 1998. Channel 5 had a consumer- led remit which may have affected what issues they covered. They recently broadcast a series of programmes entitled The Clone Zone dealing with genetics (both in factual and fictional formats). On the remaining four channels documentary/consumer/agricultural/cookery programmes have dealt with GM food and crops to some extent. The plethora of cookery programmes on network television (on average between 15 and 20 hours per week) very rarely mention food production issues, sticking closely to the cookery format. Food programmes such as Food and Drink, Watchdog, Foodfile and The Food Chain have covered GM foods, centring on general issues around the food production system and consumer interests (specifically about products like tomatoes and GM soybeans).
Yet they remain one-off items or programmes as there is such a wide remit for these types of programme. The same can be said for agricultural programmes such as Landward and Countryfile, and science programmes such Big Science, Equinox, Heart of the Matter and Tomorrow’s World. In the main, documentaries are still more likely to cover human genetics (70% of documentaries during 1995–1998 were about human genetic issues specifically) although the number of documentaries on GM food and crops trebled in 1998 compared with 1995. These have centred on the food production system in general, GM crops and GM soybeans (Watchdog: ‘The Big Dinner’ (BBC1, 28 May 1998); World in Action: ‘Eat up your Genes’ (ITV, 10 August 1998); Private Investigations (GM crops; BBC2, 2 September 1998)).
In general there is a sense in which mass media formats have failed to address some of the fundamental and more complex questions present in contemporary debates (it is easier to get more information via the Internet, for example). It is obvious that media coverage of GM food and crops is selective. This can be explained by the nature of media coverage as a whole and specifically by source competition (who gets on and who is available for comment) and ‘newsworthiness’ (the contemporary nature of the issue and the need for television and newspapers to be ‘news-led’).
News momentum and the organization of news beats and media outlets determine what will be reported at different times. Press and television news are on the whole not adapted to sustaining high-level or sustained coverage of issues, and media interest is not capable of being maintained in the face of ongoing scientific uncertainty or speculation. However, consumer choice, health confidence, the control of scientific advances and uncertainties surrounding new technologies have all taken a higher-profile image within mainstream media formats since 1998.
Responses to genetically modified foods following heightened media coverage
We returned to these groups in late 1998 and early 1999, and there were a number of very significant changes relating to discussions of genetic modification. Respondents quite openly discussed the issues (whereas there was very little conversation about it before). The issues stressed were those which had begun to be defined in the mass media, such as choice, labelling and public confidence. The respondents stated that they had begun looking at media coverage mainly because ‘you couldn’t really get away from it’ (particularly in 1999). In general terms, the issue of genetic modification was not commonly understood by respondents in any of the groups (apart from the general practitioners in Dundee). Discussions centred not on the science, but on the role of choice, ‘naturalness’ and economics:
I have no idea what it’s about but it doesn’t sound right to me, it’s not natural, and there’s no need for it in this day and age.
(Female, Llangollen)
It’s all about money again, these big companies can do this modification and can see how to make lots of money from it.
(Male, Swansea)
I don’t like the idea of it, and I won’t be buying any of the stuff they produce in this way . . . at least with this I have the choice to do that. We never had that with BSE.
(Female, Swindon)
You can see the same thing happening again as with BSE, they’re not prepared to regulate big companies properly before they’re sure this stuff is safe, and that’s not on.
(Male, London)
Why do they need to do this, we have perfectly good tomatoes as it is, and I don’t want them to last longer than they already do, it’s not natural... and I don’t think they can prove yet whether it will do any harm.
(Female, Bedford)
They have to be careful because it could end up being like BSE, you know, the problems being seen to exist far too late to do anything about it.
(Male, South Uist)
In all discussions GM food was linked with BSE. The problems which had been highlighted with the BSE crisis could be seen to happen again with this issue. Because of a lack of understanding of the scientific processes relating to the technology (as respondents themselves stated), discussion centred on the role of uncertainty and potential risks. This involved the role of science and its links to business, government and farmers, all of whom were perceived as being capable of putting market interests before public health. They were seen as having done so before with BSE.
The implication here is that it will in the future be difficult to separate these two debates. There were frequent references to being in a ‘post-BSE’ society and these were used to highlight concerns around GM food. There were a number of contradictions within these discussions in relation to the role of consumer choice and perceived safety measures.
The most frequent arguments around genetic modification centred on the ability to choose freely whether to eat these products and the perceived lack of government action in ensuring they were either properly tested or removed until proven safe. It was interesting that the same respondents discussed their resentment and indignation in relation to the ‘beef-on-the-bone’ ban which was seen as taking away the ability to choose. The most likely explanation for this contradiction is that there was a marked difference between the debates on BSE and GM food at the level of what was seen as reliable knowledge.
At the centre of this was how much information was seen to have been given out. In 1998/9 BSE was perceived as being a ‘known entity’ as it were, and armed with what was described as ‘the full story’ individuals believed that they then had the right to make up their own minds about food consumption, and to make their own risk assessments. It was constantly stated that if people were given the full facts and left to make up their own minds (in what was understood to be scientifically uncertain areas) then there would not be so many potential crises.
Conclusion
The findings confirmed that the respondents were knowledgeable about media formats and the debates highlighted by these three major food scares. It was also clear that much of their information had come from the mass media (although in a lot of cases they initially did not appreciate how much they did know and how much they had actually picked up from the media). As such, the media can make people think about what they eat: the data described on sales and the reported consumption of certain food products make it clear that media reporting of some food risks can cause dramatic shifts in buying and eating behaviour.
Media influence on public belief or action is, however, dependent on a number of factors and our respondents seemed actively to negotiate their understandings of the safety of foods and the role the media played in highlighting potential risks. Certainly developing and targeting specific messages via the mass media is important in risk communication. At the same time the communicators need to have a better understanding of how people themselves negotiate information as well as a firmer grasp of both what people believe or reject and the reasons why.
By JACQUIE REILLY in the book "The Psychology of Food Choice" (Edited by Richard Shepherd and Monique Raats), CABI Publishers (in association with Nutrition Society) UK USA- 2010, p.201-224. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
0 Response to "THE IMPACT OF THE MEDIA ON FOOD CHOICE"
Post a Comment