Possibilities for reducing health risks in food retail

Füredi-Kovács, Annamária

Keywords: organic food, food retail, perception of risks

Managers of organic food stores - as regarding the influence on health - see reliable origin to be the most important criterion during their product selecting decision making process. In the case of traditional foods they find additive artificial materials and GMOs significant among health risks, in the case of organic foods they think that significant problems arise from the shortness of the „best before” period. Dangers coming from the market orientation are judged to be more serious in the case of traditional foods than in the case of organic foods. It is in connection with the mentality with that during their product selecting decision making they emphasize factors connected to safety (eg.: reliable origin) more than market considerations (eg.: fast circulation or it is included in the choice of the competitors). Healthy foods are expected to have a reliable origin, too. In connection with the reliable origin of the products I could throw light on the contradiction that they regard the reliability of producers and sellers important, at the same time the place of origin has little influence on how safe they regard a particular product. 50% of the shopmanagers looking for products with a reliable origin judge Hungarian foods to be safe, 19% of them judge import, 34% of them judge regional products to be safe. Based on these results I find it needed to make a research that gives the possibility to examine the profiles of differentiated products based on their places of origin, in respect of thier influence on health and their risk factors. In the case of imported products it would be crucial to make difference between products coming from more and coming from less developed countries than our country. In the case of organic foods it is especially reasonable because the major part of their choice is products from abroad, that come from West-Europe (mostly from Germany and Austria), but more and more cheaper eastern organic foods appear in their portfolio (eg.: Romanian). During checking the hypothesis it could be seen that the risks of food safety were sensed in the whole process of production by shop managers. But with their behaviour to reduce risk factors they want to filter the factors of inner ingredients (eg.: artificial additives, GMOs) that directly endanger health, and they do not pay attention to indirect sources of danger (eg.: place of origin). For this reason I think it is needed to analyze the supply chain of organic foods getting into the market from the point of view of safety, so that not only risks coming from inner ingredients are supported. This would provide a starting point for the managers of organic food stores to minimalize the whole circle of risk factors.