As reports of foodborne illness outbreaks continue to make headlines across the country, consumer confidence in food safety has hit historic lows, according to a new Gallup poll.
When asked how much confidence they have in the federal government’s ability to ensure the safety of the food supply in the U.S., 28% of respondents said they don’t have much confidence and 14% have “none at all.”
In addition, the survey found that 57% of U.S. adults have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the ability of the government to keep the food supply safe - an 11 percentage point drop from the 2019 survey.
Gallup wrote that between 1999 to 2006, around 8 in 10 Americans expressed faith in government regulators when it comes to food safety. This declined to 7 in 10 after a massive salmonella outbreak in 2007, and stayed at that level before it began to decline in 2019.
The survey also found that there is a political component to consumer confidence in government food safety regulations. The study found that 74% of percent of Democrats are confident in government protections, a drop from 65% in 2019, when Republican Donald Trump was president. Conversely, 50% of Republicans said they have a great deal or fair amount of faith in government actions on food safety, a 27 percent decrease from 2019.
The 50% of Republicans and 52% of independents who are confident in government food safety protections is the lowest measured by Gallup for any party group to date.
What role are foodborne illness outbreaks playing?
According to Centers for Disease Control estimates, 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases each year in the United States. And when foodborne illness outbreaks happen, recalls typically follow.
Gallup noted that when they last conducted the food safety survey in 2019, a year in which the U.S. government issued more than 330 food recalls. In the first six months of 2024, 578 food products were recalled.
In addition, the U.S. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued 19 food recalls in June 2024, just before Gallup’s survey.
“The drop in confidence could reflect Americans’ recognition of the difficulty in responding to the large number of health threats in the food supply, as well as declining trust in the government in general. Americans’ confidence in the food available at most grocery stores has also deteriorated, which speaks to the challenges that the industry -- and the government -- will face in both keeping food safe and reassuring Americans that it is safe,” Gallup wrote.
In the scent of a recall, consumers are instructed to discard any affected food products. The Gallup poll found that thirty-seven percent of Americans have thrown out or returned food in the past year in response to a product recall or food safety advisory and 53% have avoided buying certain brands or types of food because of a recall or a food safety advisory.
Declining trust among parents
Many people find that they only start paying close attention to the food they buy from their family after they have kids. The Gallup poll found a major decline in trust in food safety among parents of young children. Only 49% expressed confidence in the government’s assurance of the food supply, down from 67% in 2019.
“Parents are now much less confident than non-parents in food safety,” Gallup wrote.
Also, only 65% of parents said they are confident about the safety of grocery store food, as opposed to 74% of non-parents.
Increased concern about grocery store food
The Gallup survey also found that 72% of Americans are very or somewhat confident about the safety of grocery store food - down from 81% in 2019.
This decline was noted across almost all subgroups, though levels of confidence in grocery food safety were higher among households that earned more than $100,000 per year.
The survey data was collected as part of Gallup’s annual Consumption Habits poll, which was conducted July 1-21. The poll included 1,010 total respondents.
Gallup linked the declining faith in government oversight to an overall “historical low faith in U.S. initiations” found in a recent poll from July 2023.
That poll found that only 27% of Americans have confidence in the Supreme Court and 26% have confidence in the office of the Presidency. The poll found that confidence in Congress was the lowest, at only 8% of respondents.
