With the improvement of people’s living standards and the change in food consumption structure, the food industry has to promote the development of food taste and appearance. The requirements of food convenience, nutrition, and the flavor are inseparable from food ingredients. “safety of food additives’ states that there are a total ninety-eight substances which might be used as additives in our food.
Safety food additives have the following three characteristics: first, it is added to the food in the material, therefore, it is generally not eaten as food alone; Second, it includes both synthetic and natural substances. Third, the purpose of adding food is to improve the quality and color, aroma and taste of food, as well as for the needs of corrosion, preservation and processing technology.
The scientists prove the benefit of additive in our food and support the use of food additive, but many people still are doubtful or disagree with that (Arnold E. Bender 1988). As we know, food additives have two main categories which are natural and man-made. Man-made food ingredient has the most serious problem in food safety problem, especially food preservatives. Therefore, I want to study food preservatives because people are still regarded chemical preservatives with suspicion. My question is about how’s inaccessibility of government’s regulation on banning low-quality artificial food preservatives.
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In my research, I will be focusing on three main aspects: government, corporation, and consumer. The three aspects become my entry points which help me understand the current production process of food preservatives and the safety problems existing in the production process. I will find out the associated interests between government and corporation. What’s a problem for the government to improve food safety standards. Besides, how to improve consumer acceptance of artificial food preservatives is another goal to achieve in the research.
On the first and second aspects, I learned so far that the government still has oversight of food safety regulation. “7 Multilevel Regulatory Governance of Food Safety: A Work in Progress” states that food preservatives should be regulated by passing multiple safety monitoring standards rather than the standard only for whether food preservatives contain harmful ingredients.
Grace Skogstad still argues that the government should strengthen the local regulation while the food preservatives are sold overseas and need to be kept for a long time. Therefore, the food preservatives standard should be different for food which depends on how long the food is stored rather than the same standard the government uses. Besides, government regulation is the leading force in food preservative safety regulation.
With the development of the social situation and the complexity and fragmentation of social relations, the government functions reflect the dual characteristics of demand expansion and regulatory constraints. “Standards and Regulatory Capitalism: The Diffusion of Food Safety Standards in Developing Countries” considers that the single government supervision has been unable to achieve all the functions of food preservatives safety supervision. The decentralized power structure and diversified subject structure appeared in the field of food preservatives safety supervision. Diahanna L. Post also indicates that the social intermediates and capital market subjects participated in the supervision of food preservatives safety, initially forming a situation of joint supervision by government subjects, market subjects, and social intermediates.
Why Government is still an existing problem on food additives regulation? “Modeling a Government-Manufacturer-Farmer game for food supply chain risk management” states that governments need to encourage manufacturers to develop and use food additives. At the same time, the government also needs to take some responsibility for the social health risks caused by the use of low-quality chemical additives by manufacturers. The punishment policy formulated by the government is to regulate and curb the risky behaviors of farmers and manufacturers and balance the tax revenue, punishment income, and social health risk.
Last but not least, most consumers are suspicious of chemical preservatives because they do not know the food additive manufacture principle and the ingredient inside food. This is why they take a skeptical attitude toward man-made food preservatives. In chapter six, “Processed Foods and the Consumer: Additives, Labeling, Standards, and Nutrition” argues that consumers are lack of knowledge and some misleading understanding of food preservatives.
Vernal S. Packard presents that Consumers still consider food preservatives are equal to a poisonous and harmful substance and, regard food preservatives as the main safety hazards in food. On another point, I learn that consumer behavior is related to education. “Association between parental consumer attitudes with their children’s sensory taste preferences as well as their food choice” argues that people’s consumption attitudes are related to their own educational level.
Consumers blindly pursue the rich taste and low price of food, thus ignoring the problems of excessive food additives in these foods. Jilani, Hannah S argues that this problem led to profitable manufacturers, and most of them began to add harmful food additives to their food for a long time. This increases the pressure on food safety supervision, and the government needs to spend more money on supervision, which leads to some manufacturers trying to find loopholes in the safety standard of food additives to profit from it.
On search strategy, I will focus on using an academic journal and book chapter on my whole research paper. I found various sources that are great and perfectly suits my topic question. For example, I want to explain that the government lacks multilevel and multifaceted policies and measures of food additive safety supervision.
My source “7 Multilevel Regulatory Governance of Food Safety: A Work in Progress” is appropriate to my topic question. It is useful for me to improve my topic. This source is about the lack of government regulation on food additives. It causes that many manufacturers are trying to find loopholes in the regulation of food additives to increase the number of food additives used in food. They sell more goods and profit from it. This has led to the emergence of more and more illegal food additives, increasing the pressure of food additives regulation.
Another source “Association between parental consumer attitudes with their children’s sensory taste preferences as well as their food choice” is useful for me to introduce the problem existing on consumers. Most consumers’ choice of food largely depends on taste and price. Then consumers’ education level will largely influence them to make major choices. Consumers’ awareness of food additives is not high. Low-educated consumers largely ignore the standards of food additives on food and choose to buy them simply because they are cheap. It mostly fits my topic because it exposes a serious problem for the government.
Improving consumers knowledge of food additives is still an important measure to reduce low quality food additives introducing by corporations because fewer consumers will buy their product. I always find my sources on JSTOR, Academic Search Complete and Web of Science. These three websites are most useful and great when I often use them search various kinds of academic sources.
On project challenges part, I search a lot of academic sources and find out that food additives problem is different from developed and developing countries because they have different food additives standard. It challenges me because some food additives are banned by most countries, but there are very few countries that support the use of that kind of food additives.
When I search the sources I know the reason. Those few countries have financial problems so that they can not improve the standard of all kinds of food additives. Sometimes, they prefer to lower the standard in order to let corporations introduce and sell more and more products for consumers and then they can maximize tax income.
Work Cited
- “Safety Of Food Additives.” The British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 5709, 1970, pp. 554– 555.
- Bender, Arnold E. “Food Additives.” Science Progress (1933- ), vol. 72, no. 4 (288), 1988, pp. 549–562.
- “Food Preservatives.” Processed Foods and the Consumer: Additives, Labeling, Standards, and Nutrition, by Vernal S. Packard, NED – New edition ed., University of Minnesota Press, 1976, pp. 97–118.
- SKOGSTAD, GRACE. “Multilevel Regulatory Governance of Food Safety: A Work in Progress.” Rules, Rules, Rules, Rules: Multi-Level Regulatory Governance, edited by G. BRUCE DOERN and ROBERT JOHNSON, University of Toronto Press, 2006, pp. 157–179.
- Post, Diahanna L. “Standards and Regulatory Capitalism: The Diffusion of Food Safety Standards in Developing Countries.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 598, 2005, pp. 168–183.
- Song, Cen, and Jun Zhuang. “Modeling a Government-Manufacturer-Farmer Game for Food Supply Chain Risk Management.” Food Control, vol. 78, Aug. 2017, pp. 443–455.
- Jilani, Hannah S., et al. “Association between Parental Consumer Attitudes with Their Children’s Sensory Taste Preferences as Well as Their Food Choice.” PLoS ONE, vol. 13, no. 8, Aug. 2018, pp. 1–13.
