Dace Santare

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Consumer Information - Experience of Food and
Veterinary Service of Latvia
Dace Santare Director of the Research Centre Food
and Veterinary Service of Latvia
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Latvia

• The territory covers 64 689 km2
• - The total number of inhabitants is 2,317
  million
• (70 are urban and 30 are rural residents)

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Food Safety System of Latvia
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Food and Veterinary Service
The FVS ensures official surveillance and control
within the veterinary sector and the whole food
chain from farm to fork - food circulation
control - veterinary surveillance and
control - border inspection -
laboratory investigations
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Organizational Chart
National level
Regional level
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Risk management
Risk assessment

• scientific cooperation
• cooperation with EFSA

• monitoring programs
• data base

Risk communication
Public Relations Division
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Networking
Model of the collaboration network
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Public Relation
One of priority of FVS is to build-up,
maintain and continuosly improve the link with
public

• Presentation of performance results, actualities
  of FVS
• Crisis communication, public information on
  emergency situations
• Routine cooperation with mass-media
• Preparation of informative materials (What are
  E substances?,
• How to avoid food poisoning!?)
• - Reflexive, direct contacting with public
  through Web page

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Example of Communication

• Object of communication
• food additives
• Iniciators
• Food and Veterinary service
• Consumers organizations
• Food Producers Associations

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To communicate with consumer - WHY?
Rumours, Myths, Stress, Misleading
Lack of objective information
PERCEPTION TRUST
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What does Consumer want?
CONSUMER
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Actors involved

• Scientists, experts
• Governmental institutions
• Food producers
• Non-governmental organizations
• Consumers
• Mass- media

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Booklet - What are E substances?
Prepared by FVS in Co-operation with scientists,
experts (nutritionist and food technologist)
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Booklet

• Two parts of booklet
• Informative part (QA)
• List of additives

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Purpose

• -To inform
• to satisfy public right to be informed
• to inform about risks and benefits of food
  additives
• to encourage to be active
• to strengthen awareness, reduce rumors and
  stress

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Distribution channels

• Through network of supermarkets
• FVS territorial units
• Non-governmental organizations (producersconsumer
  s)
• State Health Promotion centre

In the whole territory of Latvia
Interest of mass-media
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Feed back
appreciate that someone has started to
communicate the issue
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5
45
- very complicated, hard to understand
without special education

• - too simple, not very informative, does not
  explain all adverse effects of all additives

- would be better if such booklet was not made,
because there are so much terrible things
described
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Feed back

• Great interest from
• Students
• School - children
• Professionals

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What consumer would like to know?
Safe or not safe? What to eat (if at all!)?
How much? How often?
What I could choose?
Conflicting views, ambiguous messages are
confusing for the average consumer
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What man desires is not knowledge but
certainty Bertrand Russel Prof. Ortwin Renn Risk
benefit perception and communication lessons
for the risk analysis, 2004
Governmental institutions cannot produce
certainty but can provide public with information
to make on the basic knowledge/principles based
appropriate choice
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Thank you for attention! Questions??