In this section we present and discuss the results of the literature mapping process. The findings are based on manual and NVivo-based content analyses of abstracts, keywords, and titles of the 185 articles constituting our data set.
5.2. Food Safety Hazards
About 74% (137 articles) of the articles in our study identified the foods on which the research focused. We grouped these into eleven categories: Milk and dairy products; meat; fruit, and vegetables, green/organic foods; Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) foods; fish and seafood; restaurant and institutional food; beverages; sweeteners; cooking oil; and “other”. The “other” category includes agro-food, grains (e.g., rice, corn, wheat), processed, engineered, and branded foods. Of these eleven types of food, the greatest proportion of articles addressed issues related to milk and dairy products. In turn, many of these articles focused on the 2008 melamine contaminated powdered milk and baby formula incident.
It appears from our analysis that two factors—seriousness of the incident and extent of media coverage—seem to be salient in accounting for which food safety incidents were addressed in the academic social science literature.
Seriousness and coverage, of course, are legitimate motivations to study an issue. If this is the predominant rationale for studying food safety incidents, however, there is a risk of the social sciences becoming a form of journalism or storytelling, with little or no capacity to develop theories with explanatory power. Developing and implementing a social science food safety research program would provide a less ephemeral foundation for studying food safety and, perhaps, more importantly, for effectively contributing knowledge towards addressing food safety issues.
In the context of emerging knowledge societies and economies, and, especially, the increasing call for evidence-informed policy-making, theory development may be important for the socio-cultural and political relevance of social sciences. This is because theoretical knowledge is seen as the most effective means by which academics can respond to the increasingly insistent calls to apply research knowledge to a range of policy and practical domains (
Bell 1976).
Table 4 shows that about 46% of the articles reviewed identified an explicit food safety hazard in the abstracts, keywords, and/or article titles. We categorized these into two main types—intentional and unintentional—food safety hazards.
Forty percent of the articles that identified food safety hazards (i.e., 85 of 185) focused onwe categorized as intentional food safety hazards. Intentional food safety hazards include a variety of unethical and illegal acts generally motivated by the search for increased profits, but sometimes, as in the case of terrorist acts, motivated by political-cultural objectives and not financial gain. There are no studies of specific terrorist acts among the articles in our data set. Neither are there studies that focus on naturally occurring feed safety hazards. such as cyanogenic glycosides in cassava.
Where the quest for profit is the principle motive for intentionally contaminating and adulterating food, the tension between the public health and economic development dimensions of food safety is highlighted. Also highlighted is the policy maker’s conundrum of how to find a balance between the two policy objectives. The salience of the public health dimension of food safety makes it all the more surprising that the articles reviewed did not address the public health dimensions of food safety.
Unintentional food safety risks were conceptualized as those that may result from the normal functioning of the food system. Such food safety incidents may not be the result of unethical or illegal behavior. Having said that, in some cases, these food risks and hazards may be the result of such behavior on the part of some food producers and processors. A case in point might be the overuse of antibiotics and growth hormones in livestock. On the other hand, this may be inadvertent or the result of inadequate information regarding appropriate use.
5.3. Structure and Content of Reviewed Literature
In this section we report information on the structure and content of the abstracts, key words, and article titles reviewed. This information is summarized below in
Table 5. In terms of the food safety system categories, the greatest attention was paid to consumers, followed by legislators and regulators, primary producers, manufacturers, processors, transporters, media, researchers, educators, wholesalers, retailers, and, lastly, vendors and food service providers.
Regarding the distribution of articles across the food safety system categories, an almost equal number focused on single and multiple food safety system elements. Thus, it seems apparent that an implicit systems approach is being employed in about half of the articles. For social science research this is unsurprising—social sciences, after all, focus on patterned social interactions and relationships. What is surprising is that none of the abstracts explicitly stated that a systems model was used, even though, for example, relevant models are available (
Garnett and Wilkes 2014;
Munro et al. 2012).
Table 6 summarizes the dominant themes and the number and proportion of keywords associated with consumers, producers, manufacturers and processors, and legislators and regulators. It also identifies several themes associated with various types of media and the communication of information relevant to food safety issues.
The largest number of keywords related to consumers. Four major themes are associated with consumers: (1) Perceptions of quality, risk, safety, and trust; (2) consumption intentions, decisions, and behaviors; (3) purchasing intentions, behaviors, and willingness to pay; and (4) values, attitudes, and culture.
The four main themes identified through the keyword analysis are interrelated. Consumers’ perceptions of safety, quality, risk, and trust in information and information sources are related to both purchase intentions and behaviors that themselves are influenced by culture, values, and attitudes.
We combined the categories “primary producers” and “manufacturers, processors, etc.” into the category “primary and secondary producers”. In examining the keywords and the results of the abstract analysis, it was clear that, despite differences and issues specific to primary and secondary producers, there also are many issues common to those involved in producing, marketing, and selling food. These common themes were dominant in the literature reviewed.
This is evident in the five main themes identified relative to primary and secondary food producers, namely: (1) Structure, organization, and scale [of production]; (2) international trade, countries, and regions; (3) markets and marketing; (4) performance and productivity; and (5) corporate values and corporate social responsibility.
The food producers and manufacturers theme with the greatest number of keywords is “structure, organization, and scale”. It is largely, but not exclusively, focused on primary producers. Much of this research examines the relationships between the structure, organization, and scale of food production to both food safety and economic productivity. It is in the context of producers, both primary and secondary, of course, that economic development issues are most apparent and the contradictions between the public health and economic development imperatives are most obvious.
Although not represented in
Table 6, we note that, relative to primary producers, environmental and sustainability issues emerged as a minor theme. We suspect that this relative lack of attention to these issues is an artifact of the knowledge classification systems used by Web of Science and Scopus. That is, we expect that research literature dealing with agricultural, environmental, and sustainability issues may not be classified as social science. Similarly, none of the articles included in our research explicitly addressed food safety from public health dimensions of food safety. This may be because public health research is not classified as a social science by Web of Science or Scopus.
The dominant theme in the articles dealing with legislators and regulators is regulation. The second most common theme associated with this focus relates to a variety of food related legal, policy, and governance issues. The third focus is on standards and certification of food safety and quality.
Under the “media” element, in our food safety system model, we included a variety of references to information, education, and communication (IEC). The IEC themes are derived from the FAO food control system model.
Labeling and traceability are the most common issues discussed by article abstracts grouped under this category. These issues relate to developing and communicating information across the food safety system relevant to both domestic food purchase and consumption, as well as to importing and exporting food internationally. The twelve studies that address the issue of consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for enhanced information about the safety and quality of food are grouped under consumer intentions and behaviors in
Table 6.
The Media - IEC themes also include studies of social media as a means by which food safety information is disseminated to, and acquired by, consumers. Only one study addressed the role of state media as a source of information. In this domain, as well as in most others, the role and functions of social media will, undoubtedly, continue to grow in significance. Those engaged in public education will need to continue to develop expertise in the use of social media as a way to reach audiences. This includes, of course, developing critical assessment skills required to differentiate valid from invalid information and knowledge claims. Interestingly a very small number of the abstracts included in our study addressed the role and function of science as a source of relevant information.
Eight of the 185 article abstracts and keyword lists (less than 5%) identified a model or theoretical approach guiding the research, including risk theory, triple helix, game theory, ordered choice model, social theory, and the theory of planned behaviour
It could be the case that the use of analytical models and or theories are described in the full texts of the articles, however, this seems unlikely. It seemed clear from most of the abstracts reviewed that they were making empirical, not theoretical, contributions to the study of food safety in China. None of the abstracts or keyword lists made explicit reference to, or claimed to use, food system, food control system, or food safety system models.
A similar paucity of explicit identification of data, data collection, and analysis methods also characterizes the abstracts and keyword lists. Choice experiment, real choice experiment, and the Becker DeGroot Marschak (BDM) auction experiment method were the three data analysis methods that were mentioned.
A wider range of data analysis methods was presented. These included logit analysis, multivariate probit modeling, relational modeling, scientometric, and multiple-attribute modeling. With three mentions, structural equation modeling was the most frequently identified data analysis strategy.
Given the relatively small number of articles identified through our search strategy, the lack of consensus on the definition of food safety, as presented earlier, and the near absence of the use of analytical models or theories, it must be concluded that social science food safety research, in the Kuhnian sense, is pre-paradigmatic.
Food safety is a real and practical problem. We expected the research to have a strong applied character. To capture this we collected data on the presence of an explicit knowledge transfer strategy. None of the abstracts and keyword lists made any mention of an explicit strategy to facilitate the transfer and application of the research knowledge.
This is not to say that the authors of the abstracts did not include a variety of suggestions and recommendations for a variety of actors. In fact, most of the article abstracts made recommendations. Invariably, however, both the recommendations and the audiences to which they were directed were poorly defined. Also, because none of the abstracts identified an explicit knowledge transfer strategy, there was no indication that the research was informed by, or conformed to, the general methodological principles known to characterize the effective transfer and use of research knowledge (
El-Jardali and Fadlallah 2015;
Graham and Dickinson 2007;
Ivey et al. 2012;
Murage et al. 2011;
Wikipedia, s.v. Knowledge Transfer).