Consumer attitudes to quality and safety of organic and low input foods: a review

A review report has been issued in subproject 1 focusing on the relevance of consumer research to the wider QLIF project

The QualityLowInputFood (QLIF) integrated project has, as its overall objective, improvement of safety, assured quality and reduced cost throughout organic and low input food chains in Europe, increasing value to both consumers and producers. An important contribution to this objective will be made from better understanding of consumers’ expectations and attitudes towards these issues.

Some relevant aspects of consumer characteristics are to be explored as a primary contribution to the QLIF project, but others have been the subjects of more recent research.

It is clearly important that the significance of previous studies is taken into account in developing the various strands of QLIF; both to make the anticipated consumer research more focused and coherent, but also to inform and orient the life sciences component of the project.

In September 2004 a workshop was convened to discuss the relevance of consumer research to the wider QLIF project. On the basis of the workshop a report has been produced in subproject 1 (WP 1.1.1).

The report has three aims:

• to report on a survey and analysis of both scientific literature and also recent primary data available to the project team providing insights to consumer attitudes to organic products
• to support new empirical investigations of consumer attributes which will be the focus in later stages of subproject 1
• to raise issues for broader discussion, based on the foregoing

Download the report (PDF)