Risk perception and communication: lessons for the food and food packaging industry.

Health risks are front-page news. Be it bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE), surface ozone, or radiation from transmitter stations or mobile phones, the popular press puts out a constant stream of risk warnings and sensational reports about potential health threats. This paper examines how the general public perceives and assesses such information when it comes to food and food packaging risks. In the first part, the basic components of food risks are discussed and then compared with the perceptions of these risks. The main emphasis is on the risks from food packaging. The term 'perception' as used in cognitive psychology applies to the mental processes through which a person takes in, deals with and assesses information from the environment (physical and communicative) via the senses. The last part of the paper deals with the consequences of risk assessment and risk perception for risk management and risk communication.