Abstract
As the food related issues receive nationwide attention, acquiring knowledge of food safety is critical for customers to carry healthy dietary life. However, it is not necessarily clear what area of the dietary knowledge needed for customers. This paper was made to examine the expert points of view in Food Safety Commission (FSC), an independent public organization which undertakes risk assessment in Japan, with regard to a scope of dietary knowledge which consumers should know. We asked thirty FSC experts to participate in this examination. Twenty-eight of them agreed and ranked food safety topics in order of importance for customers. We analyzed by three-round Delphi technique, a qualitative approach for experts to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members. The response rates at each round were 89.2%, 82.1%, 67.8% in order. After three rounds, 34 topics had been identified. Topics related to 'a way of risk thinking' was ranked the first, and the fourth and tenth are also pertinent topics for risk assessment concerned. FSC members are highly interested in promoting consumers' understanding for food safety risk assessment. As other "Pesticides", "Genetically modified food", "Food additives", "Natural toxins" and "Health food" are ranked in top 10, and by analyzing experts' response, we found that FSC experts required customers to acquire extensive knowledge about these topics. As other studied for dietitians and food sanitation inspectors by three- round Delphi technique, we compared the differences of experts' viewpoints. As a result, we found that each expert had different aspects in terms of consumer food-safety knowledge, and these differences of the aspect derived mainly from that of their expertness and type of the job.
