EIT Food TRUST4FOOD

Context

Building consumer food-related trust is very timely and necessary, not only for a better fulfilling of consumers’ needs and concerns, but also for the creation of an ecosystem able to provide responses to food crises and food science innovations in the best interest of European citizens.

Co-creating the key pressing themes with consumers, as well as potential interventions and solutions, will facilitate the trust-building process. Trust4Food is a path to engage consumers with the issues of trust and its antecedents and consequences, transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of the EU food system.

Objective

The aim of the project is to better understand the meaning of trust, the key drivers underpinning current trust levels and their diverse outcomes. This understanding was gained by generating debates around the most pressing issues emerging from the EIT Food Trust Tracker.

Trust4Food aims to:

• contribute in driving consumers awareness, engaging citizens in defining what trust means in the food system
• understand the drivers of food consumer trust/mistrust among the food chain
• discuss the “good reasons of distrust”
• suggest the most efficient interventions to overcome distrust
• rebuild confidence in the entire food system by providing consumers with a truthful and transparent source for food information.

Impact

The project activities enabled consumers to voice their views and to engage in a dialogue about their needs, beliefs and concerns with regard to food. A thorough understanding of the meaning that consumers from different EU countries attribute to “trust” in the food value chain had an impact on both the food chain actors and national and EU policy-makers to better build a climate of mutual trust through the implementation of appropriate policies.

Trust can ameliorate risk perceptions in the presence of scientific uncertainty about a technology or products. By exploring the key drivers and deterrents of trust combined with new ideas derived from consumers and implemented in a consumer – food system bidirectional discourse, Trust4Food impacts the food system’s transparency and integrity.