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Food Safety Matters
Kris Sollid: What Does Consumer Sentiment Say About the Safety of the U.S. Food Supply?
00:30:22
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- [00:10]
A
Hello everyone and welcome to Food Safety Matters, the podcast for food safety professionals. I'm Stacy Acheson, publisher of Food Safety magazine, and I want to thank you for joining us for this special bonus episode. Today we're diving into what consumers really think about the safety of the US Food supply, how confident they feel, what's driving their perceptions, and what the data tell us about those changing attitudes. And to help us with this exploration, our editorial director and co host, Adrienne Blum spoke with Chris Solid with the International Food Information Council, or ific. Now, before we hear their conversation, I'd like to share a bit more about our guest. Chris Solid is the Senior Director for Research and Consumer Insights at the International Food Information Council. A registered dietitian with a passion for improving nutrition, science communications, Chris leads iFix consumer research projects, educational resource development, social and traditional media engagement, and contributes written work to consumer, trade and peer reviewed publications. And now let's listen to their conversation.
- [01:20]
B
So today on the podcast we're going to be dissecting the results of two recent International Food Information Council, or ific, consumer surveys that measure Americans confidence in, and also their understanding of the safety of the US Food supply. So welcome to the podcast, Chris. It's great to have you here.
- [01:38]
C
Hi Adrian, great to be here.
- [01:41]
B
So, okay. IFIC released its 20th annual food and Health survey earlier this year in July, and the findings were presented at the 2025 IAFP meeting. So the 2025 IFix survey found that consumer confidence in the safety of the US food supply has hit a 13. Can you tell us a little bit about the methodology of the report and some of the metrics that contributed to this drop in confidence?
- [02:07]
C
Absolutely. The Food and Health Survey is our flagship consumer research projects. It's one of our core objectives here at IFIC is understanding the consumer mindset in all things related to food and health, and particularly food safety as well. So we're really proud of our annual survey. We've been doing it since 2006. So this marks the 20th consecutive year that we've released this. And this is really widely referenced among a wide variety of stakeholders, academic researchers, healthcare professionals, industry stakeholders, media, and even policymakers to some extent. So we, we do this survey as a, you know, public service to a variety of audiences and people often ask us about the methods that we employ for this research. So I think it's really important, I want to thank you for asking that question. It's really important to understand the methods that go into any type of research because that is really essential to how we interpret the results. So first of all, our annual food and health survey is an online survey and we conduct it every spring. Typically it's been conducted in March in 2020 because of COVID we did delay it for about a month and did conduct it in April. So we really like to keep that variable controlled. We think that fielding it at the same time period every year really helps to validate the results and the trends that we see over time. So each year we conduct it in the spring and we're surveying Americans in our survey. So that's another important caveat to the results. We're asking U.S. population about their beliefs, their behaviors and their perceptions of food and the impact on their food purchasing decisions. And our sample size is 3,000Americans. So it's a pretty robust sample. And it's important to note that this is not a cohort study that we run every year. We are not polling and inquiring among the same sample of American consumers. It is a different set of consumers each year. But even though it is a different set of consumers, we do each year balance and weight our results to ensure they're reflective of the US population. And our ages range from 18 to 80. And this is, and we reflect these, the demographics of this population to match the Current Population Survey. So we're able to generalize our results to the American population. And our sample size does give us the power to dig deeper into lots of different demographics to try to understand where might some differences lie. Oh, and I should say that one of the important caveats to our research is that we use an online database. We, we use a, a research firm who has access to an online database where survey takers, potential respondents opt in to be selected to fill quotas for certain research. And each of those survey takers has access to the Internet. So we know that not, not necessarily everybody does. But our survey takers take an online survey. They've opted into these panels and, and have access to Internet.
- [05:22]
B
Well, thanks for laying out, you know, some of the methodologies and the demographics. That's really helpful, I think stage for what we're going to talk about with these surveys. And you know, first we're, we're, we're looking at the Food and Health Survey and we want to dig into some of the reasons why consumer confidence has decreased. You know, I mentioned that 13 year low, but we also see significant concerns about the corporate and functional aspects of food, of the food supply. And among those who reported low confidence, 59% believed that the food industry profits are prioritized over safety, 54% believe that not all parts of the food system work together to ensure safety, and 46% believe that government regulations are insufficient to ensure food safety. So, you know, I guess my first question related to all that would be, how do current consumer attitudes about the corporate emphasis on food safety compare to what you've seen in past surveys?
- [06:20]
C
Yeah. So maybe I'll just start with the overall decline that we've seen in consumer confidence in the safety of the US Food supply. As we've been doing our annual food and health survey for 20 years, we didn't include anything on food safety for the first two years of our survey. So in 2008 was the first year where we really identified food safety as an important topic that we wanted to understand the consumer mindset on. And beginning in the 2012 Food and Health Survey, we honed in on consumer confidence in the safety of the US food supply. So we now have 13, 14 years of data tracking this sentiment. So if I go back to the earliest years of our survey, when we asked about confidence in the safety of the food supply, 2012, we saw that a little more than three in four reported being either very confident or somewhat confident. Over time, it may have fluctuated a little bit given some incidents that, you know, pop up from year to year. But the trend was fairly stable until just a couple years ago in. And this year, in 2025, we saw that only a little more than half, 55% of Americans reported feeling very confident or somewhat confident in the safety of the US Food supply. So this is a pretty steep erosion of this confidence that we've seen just recently. So these are lows in the life of the survey that we've been, you know, that we've been asking this question in our survey. So just as an examp example, for the second consecutive year now, we've seen this confidence drop. It went from 70% in 2023 to 62% in 2024. And now we're at 55%. And this is really being driven, you know, mainly by those who report being very confident. So for three straight years, we've seen those, the percentages of those people expressing high confidence decline. And now we're approaching a historic low that we saw in 2016. So I think that's important to just begin the conversation in the overall confidence. And this is something that cuts across. You know, I mentioned how we weight our sample by, you know, for demographics and whatnot. This is really important because this confidence in the safety of the US Food supply not only Is it down compared to, you know, recent years? But when we look at each demographic, it's something that cuts across all of them. This is not unique to one portion of our survey or segment of our population. Each demographic that we capture, the main ones by generation, by income, by gender, by education, even ethnicity, we're seeing this finding persist across all of them. So it's, it's not something that's just driven by one, you know, small portion, you know, loud voices or, you know, strong opinions. This is a common theme, no matter.
- [09:20]
B
Which really is an overall drop in confidence. Yeah.
- [09:24]
C
In our data, you know, there are certainly other, other data sets that may probe on this and, and have, you know, different numbers. But as we've been trending this since 2012, this is just something we've, we've seen, this is the trend we've seen in recent years. But I'd love to touch on the profit piece over safety as well. That's, I think that's a really important factor.
- [09:47]
B
Yeah, I think so too. And I guess, you know, with, regarding that, you know, this perception, consumer perception of profits over safety, do you think that food companies should be concerned about that consumer perception and also, you know, how should they respond to that?
- [10:00]
C
Yeah, that's, that's a difficult one. You know, thinking about the safety of the food supply, it's probably something we take for granted. It's expected that food in the marketplace, on the shelf, at our local grocery store, is safe to consume. Now we can talk about other issues that have come up in recent years around safety of ingredients and whatnot. But when we think about the umbrella or the larger idea of food being safe, you know, it can be chemical or it can be microbial. So there are different elements that we might get into, you know, in this conversation or otherwise, that are really important to consider. But when we look at the, the whole of the way people feel about profits being prioritized over safety, this is something we have asked only twice in the life of our food and health survey. The first time was in 2023 where we saw about 55%. Just a little more than half of our respondents cite the prioritization of profits over safety as a reason why they lack confidence. So that's an important caveat. These are people who are expressing a lack of confidence, who are saying that one of the reasons why they lack that confidence is the perceived prioritization of profits over safety. And this year we followed up on that. So about a two year gap in that data collection, we didn't see much of a movement there, no significant difference. But we did see a small rise, 59% of people saying they feel that way this year. So we often trend our data and we'll cite the significant changes we see over time. So just in that two year gap, it's not statistically significant, but it is important to know that it's more than half of people. It is the leading reason of those that we offer people to respond to that. You know, those that lack confidence in the safety of the food supply cite that profit.
- [11:59]
B
And you know, I think it's interesting that we're looking at data on that particular question between 2023 and 2025, because certainly between those two years we're having a lot of changes in the food industry food policy. And you know, we've also seen a lot of upheaval this year in the federal agencies that have oversight of protecting the food supply. So I guess my next question would be how do you think that this factors into concerns about different parts of the food system not working together to ensure safety? Or, you know, that piece about government regulations being insufficient to ensure food safety?
- [12:36]
C
Yeah, that's another thing we've heard from consumers. So in our, in our food and health survey, we wanted to understand who lacks confidence, who, who has confidence in the safety of the US Food supply. But we also wanted to understand from everybody, regardless of where they fall on that spectrum of confidences, what steps can be taken to increase your confidence in the safety of the US Food supply. And this is a question that we began in 2023, had a two year gap in data collection, and revisited it again this year in 2025. And we do see some interesting differences in just that two year time period. And what we've heard from consumers this year is that there really is a want to understand both how food companies are ensuring, currently ensuring that the food supply is safe. They also want to understand how the government currently ensures that the food supply is safe. So there is that duality there. They are looking toward the industry, there are the companies who are manufacturing the products, and they're also looking to the government for those regulatory aspects. And then there's also this interesting dynamic of both a proactive and reactive nature of what consumers expect from the government. So an increasing number of our consumers want to understand how the government's responding when food is deemed unsafe. So more of that reactive component of, you know, first is to ensure that food is kept safe. You know, that sort of proactive side of food safety. But also once something is deemed unsafe, whether It's a recall or whether it's a change of a regulatory perspective on the safety of ingredient. What is ingredient, what is the government doing to respond to those findings? So I think that's an interesting thing to point out for consumers. They do see that those differences.
- [14:36]
B
Yeah, it kind of sounds like that consumers are expressing a need or a want for more truthful and transparent education from both government and industry about the safety of the food supply. So it seems like it could be, you know, something you might take away from the answers to those questions.
- [14:55]
C
Absolutely. I think that our data anyway would, would indicate that there is a need or a desire for consumers to understand a little bit more of the details what is happening. So how, and this is a role that IFIC will often play in the science communication realm is explaining or helping people understand why certain decisions are made. What does science say on the safety of an ingredient? And as a result, what are companies, what is the government doing about these new findings in the scientific domain? Because you might, as as many of you might have encountered or be aware that often what's, you know, can be portrayed in the media as one thing is not necessarily reflective of what the body of scientific evidence might say on that particular ingredient. So just because things are being, you know, limited in the food supply or removed from a product line, there might be this connotation that that ingredient or that food is not safe to consume when it could just be an adjustment to consumer demand, for example, or a supply chain issue. So there could be many reasons why something is reformulated. And it's important to help reassure the consumer that it, that it isn't necessarily always a safety concern. That way they are, you know, reassured because the expectation is that the food at the market, at the grocery store is safe to consume.
- [16:23]
B
Yeah, great point. And you know, so we know another top cause of low consumer confidence in food safety is recalls. And you know, specifically too many of them, as 43% of the low confidence respondents indicated. Now in September, IFIC released the results of a supplemental survey on Americans perceptions of food recalls. So what were some of the key findings from this survey?
- [16:48]
C
Yeah, thanks for citing that. So we also do monthly research. So in addition to our annual food and health survey, we have a monthly research program. These are the IFIC Spotlight surveys. And we're releasing every month new data on important topics to a variety of stakeholders, just like with our food and health survey. And in September, we focused on a couple of things related to food safety. Given that it's food safety education, Month one was Food recalls. And when we were asking consumers about their perceptions about food recalls, this idea that recalls may or may not be increasing over time was something we wanted to hone in on. So recalls are handled by both FDA and USDA. FDA regulates about 80% of our food supply. So the majority of the recalls would come through, you know, through the FDA channels in terms of the foods that they regulate. And what we heard from consumers is that there is this perception that food recalls are on the rise. And when we look at the data, it's interesting because in recent years, according to USDA data, food recalls are slightly on the rise, but compared to 10 years prior, they're actually down. So there is this difference. Yes, recently they are on the, you know, the upswing, but compared to 10 years ago, they're down by about 50%. So I think that's an interesting perception that consumers might have versus what the data actually show. And when you look at FDA data, it's, it's really, it's even more interesting. So when the Food Safety Modernization act was enacted and implemented about 15 years ago or so, we, we did. FDA data does show some increases initially over time in that time. But, but since 2019, we've seen sharp declines in the number of recalls in FDA data. And again, they, they are responsible for about 80% of the food supply. So overall, you're seeing food recalls come down over time, but the consumer perception might not necessarily match that. It could be, you know, their favorite products are often being recalled or certain categories that they might prefer might be undergoing some recalls. And the nature of those recalls is another important, I think, really important topic to, to probe on, you know, the severity of them versus the volume of them, I think is another thing that consumers can often conflate.
- [19:25]
B
Yeah, yeah. You know, if your IFC data is saying that, you know, three in four Americans believe that food recalls are on the rise, but that's, you know, as you just pointed out, at odds with really what FDA and USDA are reporting with their data, especially when you look at the historical trend over time, like over, you know, the last decade or so. So do you think that people are conflating the severity of high profile recalls associated with foodborne illness with just a number of general recalls which, you know, as we know from FDA data, most of them are associated with, you know, mislabeling allergens. It's not always foodborne illness. But what are your thoughts on that?
- [20:03]
C
Yeah, that's, that's a, you know, as we were just talking about, that's that's one thing that comes up as plausible. It's very difficult to say with certainty, at least in our data. There might be other data sets that, that hone on in this more, but it's, but it's difficult to say. We know there are thousands of recalls each year and you, you know, you pointed out the, the main causes of each of those and they are important. The CDC, you know, their data show between 5 and 6% have, of adults and children have a food allergy. So recalls about food allergens are critical to certain portions of our population. And often regardless of the reason for the recall, the majority of recalls, they're often voluntary and precautionary. They're not necessarily indicating always that there is actually a problem. There are manufacturers and facilities that are doing this, you know, for things like cross potential, cross contamination and other reasons. So they're, they are often, you know, recalls are voluntary by nature for the most part anyway. And so these, the volume of recalls, regardless of the reason, could be a reason why consumer confidence is eroding or declining that we see in our data. And this can really, you know, these, these number of recalls can undermine the confidence in that, in that. But it could also be that the severity of certain recalls are widely reported. They are acute, they are critical to the health of vulnerable segments of our population. So there is that, there is always going to be that tension there for volume versus severity.
- [21:51]
B
Yeah, you know, as you pointed out, there are a lot of recalls per year and many of them are precautionary. Right. But then when you see these high profile recalls where there are deaths associated with, you know, recall or it's, it's an incredibly large recall. Like right now as we're recording this, there's a recall of 6 million eggs. Right. For, for salmonella. Right. So that, that makes headlines. And I think that that's, that's really interesting when you consider the possible impact of these really high profile or extensive things on consumer perception of the, the food safety, of the overall food safety of the food supply. But I want to move to another supplemental survey that IFIC released in September. And this one was on Americans perceptions of the FDA generally recognized as safe or, or GRAS program. So what do those survey results say about consumer confidence in the safety of food and beverage ingredients as well as the awareness of the confidence in the GRAS program?
- [22:55]
C
Yeah, this one's a little, I think there's certainly less awareness of the graft program than many other parts of our, the regulation of our food supply. But we have seen that in our food and health survey. For example, we did see last year in the 2024 survey that just a little more than a quarter of Americans who view additives and ingredients as a top food safety issue said they were very or somewhat familiar with graft. So even among people who are tuned in or plugged into these issues or they report that these are important to them, even among those folks, there is a low awareness of the GRAS program. Now, when we looked at our Spotlight survey on the GRASS program just from this September, we found that just over half of Americans said they had heard of the GRASS program. Now that might just on its own, in isolation, that might seem high, you know, compared to what I, what I just said about our food and health survey from the previous year. So there could be a variety of reasons for that. But in our, in our data collection from September, we did, we did find that just over half said they had at least heard of the FDA's GRAS program. And among those who had heard of the program, 65% said they thought it was effective and while only 16% viewed it as ineffective. So this is about a 50 point gap in terms of its effectiveness among people who had heard about that. I know there are some considerations right now about revamping the program at the federal level that's being batted back and forth. Likely the program will be evolving as science evolves and as consumers and their interpretations evolve. So does our government need to keep pace with that? So I think it's an important factor to think about both awareness of the program among consumers, but also that perceived effectiveness, because there are certainly improvements that can be made in any program, including the GRASS program, and we'll see where those changes go in the future.
- [25:10]
B
Yeah, that's really interesting data. And I think it's especially interesting when we look at some of the focuses of the current administration and the MAHA movement on things like the GRASS program. And I guess that leads into my last question for you. How do you think that the MAHA movements and Secretary Kennedy's focus on these food chemicals and additives, you know, such as synthetic dyes, seed oils, things like that, as well as more nutrition centric aspects like ingredients commonly found in high quantities and ultra processed foods, how are these things influencing consumer perceptions of ingredient food safety in the U.S. food supply and also the government's responsibility for overseeing it?
- [25:54]
C
Yeah, I think time will tell on how consumers respond to these current initiatives. The one thing I would say is that it is not these current initiatives that began this conversation. These conversations have been happening in our data. We've seen upticks in people expressing desire to see more information about certain ingredients, about the safety of them, about their healthfulness. We've seen this for the past decades. In fact, we see when we ask consumers to tell us what are the factors they use or the criteria they use to determine how healthy a food is, we're seeing more and more people tell us, you know, information about the ingredients or the way a food is processed. So these conversations are not necessarily beginning with the Make America Healthy Again movement. They've certainly elevated their prominence or at least the exposure to the average person, which I would value, I think is important, you know, to talk people. Having people talk more about the healthfulness of the food they choose, their overall diets as well as individual foods, I think is a critical conversation. So I would. I would say that that's one positive of the movement, that I guess some of the downsides of it is, you know, just trying to understand not just what the consumers are hearing or what they believe, but that connection to the evidence that is really. That should be driving policy. And I mentioned before in our conversation about the removal of certain ingredients or reformulations from products can really connote something that's unsafe to a consumer. They might think that a reformulation is being made because of a safety issue, when in fact, it's just either consumer demand or a supply chain issue. So I think that's a communication challenge with some of these initiatives now at the state level, some of these ingredients are being legislated for removal or, you know, labeling concerns. So I think it's really important for science, communicators, for regulators, for any stakeholder in this food space, including food safety, to really help the consumer understand that it's not just about safety. In most cases, this is a response to trying to improve the healthfulness of the average American's diet. And the way in which we get there can be debated back and forth left and right. But I think that, as we've seen in our data, consumers want more transparency. They want more information about how decisions are being made, why they're being made. So the more we can help people understand those concepts, I think a more informed consumer can lead to more healthy choices overall.
- [28:56]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. And, you know, again, just hammering home the importance of that consumer education piece and transparency, and certainly, you know, if it plays a big role in helping consumer consumers understand what's going on. So, Chris, I want to thank you for being on the podcast today. I think it's really interesting for our listeners who span food safety professionals across a variety of fields to be able to keep a pulse on what consumers are thinking and the trends in their perceptions of the food supply safety. And I think that's really helpful for our listeners to hear that and to hear it through the lens of IFIC data. So thank you so much. It's been a great discussion and we look forward to sharing this with our listeners.
- [29:38]
C
Thanks so much. It was wonderful to be here and that's, that's the role we serve at ific. And it's, it's great to hear that the research we collect and the resources we provide can be valuable. So thank you for the invitation.
- [29:49]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [29:51]
A
Thanks again to Chris Solip for joining us and to IFC for sharing these important insights with us today. You can learn more about IFC's Food and Health Survey and other consumer research@foodinsight.org you can also find that link to the IFIC website in our show, Notes of your Podcast Player, or on our website, food-safety.com we hope you enjoyed this special episode of Food Safety Matters, and we'll talk to you soon.