Trans-science and Moral Panics: Understanding Food Scares

The issue of food safety and the general public′s perception of it is addressed. Risk perception among consumers is a major factor affecting food choice. The cultural and economic context within which food consumption as risk-taking behaviour is defined and it is shown that long-term cultural and economic trends have developed a situation in which ambivalence concerning food can interact with intensive media coverage to induce acute bouts of large-scale collective anxiety. It is shown that the recent food scares in the UK are not random occurrences; they emerge from an interaction of a number of identifiable factors.