Trans‐science and Moral Panics: Understanding Food Scares

The issue of food safety and the general public′s perception of it is addressed. Risk perception among consumers is a major factor affecting food choice. The cultural and economic context within which food consumption as risk‐taking behaviour is defined and it is shown that long‐term cultural and economic trends have developed a situation in which ambivalence concerning food can interact with intensive media coverage to induce acute bouts of large‐scale collective anxiety. It is shown that the recent food scares in the UK are not random occurrences;they emerge from an interaction of a number of identifiable factors.