Food safety in urban China: Perceptions and coping strategies of residents in Nanjing

Abstract

Food safety has become an increasingly pressing sociopolitical issue in China due to the outbreak of food safety scandals since the 2000s. Existing studies have highlighted the socio-economic context of this issue, its drivers and implications. Yet, few studies have examined the perceptions of food safety conditions and strategies undertaken by consumers in their daily lives to cope with the challenge. Based on a city-wide survey of 1210 households and 36 interviews in Nanjing, China, this research adopts an ‘everyday’ perspective of analysis to investigate Nanjing residents’ perceptions of, and strategies to cope with, the food safety challenge. Perceptions include the severity of the food safety problem, the least safe foods, as well as causes and responsibilities. Coping strategies include various approaches to food access and food preparation. This article also compares the validity of potential sources of trust in food. On the one hand, the study demonstrates how the structural changes in China’s food system (i.e. chemical intensive food production and elongated food supply chains) constitute the major problems and causes of food safety issues. On the other hand, it reveals the considerable latitude within which Nanjing residents proactively exercise their agency when facing food safety challenges.

Keywords

food safety coping strategies trust food system urban China

While maintaining a sufficient supply of food to cities has been an ongoing challenge for cities in the Global South amidst rapid urbanization, food safety, in various forms, poses a different kind of challenge for ensuring that urban residents are well fed. The diverse sources of food safety problems, ranging from naturally toxic plants and animals, to microbial and chemical contaminations, and the use of illegal additives, have seriously affected people’s health.¹ The World Health Organization² estimates that contaminated food and drinking water causes more than two million deaths annually. Unsafe food also undermines the livelihoods of people involved in food handling, tourism, and food exports. Food safety has become a socio-economic and policy domain that has significant implications for agricultural sustainability, nutrition, health and global trade.³

Although it is debatable to place China in the Global South category, China is generally considered an emerging economy or transitioning economy, from an economy with strong state control to one that is increasingly market oriented.⁴ This transitioning feature of China’s economy is reflected in its changing food system (e.g. industrialized and vertically integrated agriculture sector, market-oriented food production and processing, and rapid extension of food value chains) closely related to its food safety problems,⁵ many of which have been recurring in the past few decades. Since the turn of the 21st century, food safety scandals have resulted in widespread food scares.⁶ Some of the most critical concerns of Chinese consumers are excessive chemical residues on fresh produce associated with the industrialized farming system, water pollution and heavy-metal pollution in soil associated with the uncontrolled industrial development in the countryside, abuse of artificial additives in processed food, and risks associated with genetically modified crops.⁷ Although similar food safety problems were also commonly found in the Global North during its early industrialization and urbanization stage, food safety problems in China have been more intense and presented greater challenges due to its intensified urbanization and agri-food industrialization process.⁸

Constant exposures to contaminated, adulterated and fake foods have made food safety the utmost concern for Chinese citizens.⁹ It mirrors China’s transition towards a ‘risk society’ along with its rapidly changing food system.¹⁰ As Yunxiang Yan stated, ‘Chinese society has been affected more by food-safety scares than has any other on earth’.¹¹ Due to the extreme anxiety of the public, concerns over the food safety crisis have spread beyond the food supply chain and have garnered increasing sociopolitical significance.¹² Moreover, reports on dramatic food safety scandals in China severely compromised the reputation of food produced in China on the global market,¹³ which in turn have generated repercussions in the domestic food sector. Food safety has gradually found its way onto many research and policy agendas, as demonstrated by its impacts on revisions of the regulatory structure in recent years.¹⁴

Rampant food safety problems pose research challenges on two different scales. On the one hand, at the macro level, it is crucial to understand the broader context of these problems.¹⁵ Various social, economic and ecological transformations are rapidly shaping the complex issues around food safety. These include the economic disparity among different social groups, changing dietary patterns, delocalized food supply chains, and environmental degradation. On the other hand, at the micro level, the investigations of food safety should not merely emphasize impersonal and impartial descriptions of the problem¹⁶ while overlooking or viewing with disdain the lived experiences of people. The food safety challenge, apart from the objective facts, is a personal everyday experience that embodies perceived risks and constant adaptation attempts.¹⁷ Understanding the food safety challenge in the context of daily lives is not only sociologically significant. It is also crucial to understand the socially embedded nature of food safety problems and to reflect on the broader institutional environment in terms of policy relevance and priorities.

Drawing on Jonathan Rigg’s theorization of ‘everyday geography’¹⁸ versus globalization (the significance of the ‘everyday’ framework is discussed further in the following section), the purpose of this article is to ground the broad food system changes together with its associated globalization and industrialization in specific everyday experiences of food. Specifically, it documents the everyday experiences of urban residents perceiving and coping with food safety risks (e.g. specific food procurement and preparation tactics) in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province in China. This study examines citizens’ perceptions of the general food safety environment, the various coping strategies in procuring and preparing food, and their trust in specific food certifications in response to food safety concerns. We argue that the food safety crisis has become a centrepiece of people’s food knowledge, which has profound implications for the entire food system in China.

Everyday framework to understand food safety

It is crucial to situate the causes, perceptions and implications of the food safety crisis within the changing political economy,¹⁹ as suggested in literature that explored the relevance of the much-celebrated ‘risk society’ theory, ‘post modernity’ and the socially and historically constructed nature of risk.²⁰ In contrast to China’s macro sociopolitical changes from planned economy to market economy along with rapid urbanization and industrialization since the 1980s, the changes in China’s food systems received much less scholarly attention in terms of their connections with consumer perceptions of and approaches to food safety risks.²¹ We are referring specifically to the increasingly industrialized agricultural sector, the elongating and modernizing of food supply chains,²² the loss of local food culture and seasonality, the changing dietary patterns of consumers,²³ as well as the recent emergence of alternative food networks at the grass-roots level.²⁴

As the risk of food safety has been ‘dynamically evaluated and managed by individuals, cultures, institutions, and ad hoc groups’,²⁵ it is vital to ground the analysis of risk perceptions in Chinese people’s daily lives. This is because the transformations at the macro and meso level are not meaningful, at least for consumers, unless examined in pragmatic everyday terms.²⁶ This everyday framework, as opposed to the analysis of overarching meta-processes, resonates with Rigg’s call to ‘avoid portraying people as “victims” and locality as the mere stage on which the meta-processes of globalization are worked out’.²⁷ It focuses on ordinary people, everyday actions and commonplace events from an agency-oriented perspective, which ‘emphasizes the degree to which individuals have control over their lives’.²⁸ Applying this framework to food safety studies enables us to understand the details and minutiae of people’s everyday personal experiences in ensuring food safety. It reveals the considerable latitude within which consumers have been exercising their agency to navigate food safety issues.

Although we referenced Rigg’s everyday geography, this article only emphasized the significance of the everyday framework, not necessarily from a geographical perspective. Moreover, this everyday framework does not intend to exclude or overlook the significance of structural changes. Rather, we wish to draw attention to the implications of food system changes for perceptions of food safety risks. We argue that they define the major problems and causes of food safety issues imposed on consumers. As a reflection of structural changes, the food system also provides a convenient lens through which to explore the linkages between food safety issues and societal and political economy transitions. Therefore, although this study examines food safety issues at the micro level, it sheds light on multifaceted meso-level changes (i.e. food system) and macro-level changes (i.e. society and political economy) simultaneously.

This study incorporated these connections between food safety perceptions, coping strategies and food system changes into the design of the survey and interview questions. For example, we listed various food hazards associated with the industrialization of the agricultural sector and the extended food supply chain for respondents in the question about which food safety problems they considered to be the most important. We also probed the issue of trust and the purchase of ecologically certified food as potential approaches to circumvent food safety risks.

Research methods

This study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the magnitude of food safety risks, the various coping strategies in people’s daily lives, and potential approaches to improve people’s trust in food safety. The research is a part of the Hungry Cities Partnership project started in 2014 that investigated urban food security, informal food economy, and entrepreneurship in the Global South. Nanjing as a relatively wealthy city does make it less representative of many of China’s poor cities. Nevertheless, we found in our fieldwork that food regulations in Nanjing resemble the broad food-productivity-centred and rapidly changing food policy regime in China. This research does not intend to compare Nanjing with other cities, but the food safety perceptions and strategies of Nanjing residents offer a profile of the current food safety conundrum in China and also enable us to revisit and extend many of the previous studies that paid inadequate attention to the everyday features, or lived experience, of the problem.

The data were collected from 36 structured interviews with consumers, vendors and market managers at three local food markets in Nanjing in July 2014 and a citywide survey of 1210 households in Nanjing in July 2015. For most survey questions, more than 1170 of the surveys are valid. Within each household, in order to maintain reliability of the data, we surveyed the household head or a household member who was responsible for food procurement and food preparation. On many points, we found that the results from the surveys corroborated the interview results, thus confirming the reliability of our findings.

The survey samples covered all 11 districts in Nanjing, with a specific focus on urban residents. The 1210 household sample size was distributed among the 11 districts based on the population size of each district²⁹ (only urban populations were included in Lishui and Gaochun districts) using stratified sampling (proportional allocation). We then randomly sampled urban subdistricts within each district and neighbourhood within each sampled subdistricts. In total, 100 neighbourhoods were randomly selected across 29 subdistricts. Within each neighbourhood, we used a random number generator to randomly select the buildings and then the floor to draw samples from. Once the floor was randomly selected, we systematically sampled apartments in these buildings (every third apartment). If a household was unable to respond to the survey, the next household was approached. Figure 1 shows the distribution of surveys conducted.

Figure 1.

The location of Nanjing in China and the distribution of survey samples.

To complement the quantitative survey results, this study also drew upon qualitative data from 36 interviews conducted by one of the authors in 2014 at three neighbourhood wet markets in downtown Nanjing – Jinxianghe (进香河) Trade Market near Chengxianjie (成贤街), in Xuanwu district; Kexiang (科巷) Vegetable Market near Shudeli (树德里), in Qinhuai district; and Nanwanying (南湾营) Trade Market near Wenkangyuan (文康苑), in Qixia district. These three neighbourhoods were chosen based on their accessibility, varying sizes and distance from the city centre (see Table 1). Chengxianjie and Shudeli neighbourhoods are located close to the city centre and Wenkangyuan neighourhood is located further away. In total, 34 interviews were conducted with consumers and vendors and two interviews were conducted with market managers.

Table 1.

Key attributes of the three studied neighbourhoods.*

Neighbourhood	Population	Population density (per km²)	Area of neighourhood (km²)	Average monthly household income (RMB)
Chengxianjie	18,000	22,500	0.8	2,000
Shudeli	8,000	50,000	0.16	3,000 – 4,000
Wenkangyuan	4,300	19,545	0.22	2,000

The data presented in Table 1 resulted from structured interviews with Neighbourhood Committee employees. They are not based on any written reports or official government documents.

Food safety environment of Nanjing

Our survey reveals that most Nanjing residents (about 76 per cent) worried about food safety on a daily basis. A total of 21.2 per cent of valid respondents ‘worried very much’ that they and their households might not be able to get safe food to eat everyday, while 30.4 per cent were ‘somewhat worried’, and 22.4 per cent of respondents were ‘a little worried’. Only 24.1 per cent of respondents were ‘not worried at all’. This alarmingly high level of anxiety reveals not only the pressing food safety environment that is directly felt by most households, but also potentially the lack of capacity of households to acquire safe food continuously or to ensure the safety of food they consume. This includes either a lack of access to food supply channels for safe food, monetary resources or trustworthy information. Families facing this uncertainty everyday would experience a lack of power and control over the food they consume, a genuine consequence of the elongated food supply chains and the rise of the chemical-dependent food system. This anxiety and feeling of powerlessness was expressed by one of our interviewees thus: ‘I don’t trust any of the food I eat, but I just eat it and hope for the best. I worry for my children, but it’s what there is here in this country [China]’ (Feng,³⁰ 6 July 2014).

The loss of consumers’ confidence in the food safety environment in Nanjing was induced by various food safety problems, including food contamination at the production stage (i.e. pollution of water, soil and air, overuse of chemicals and hormones), poor livestock farming practices, contamination and adulteration of food along the food value chain as well as the presence of genetically modified food. Survey respondents were asked to identify three most serious food safety problems from a list of 12. Table 2 summarizes the responses, ordered from the most to least serious.

Table 2.

Nanjing residents’ perceptions of the most serious food safety problems.

Most serious food safety problems (choose three)	Number of respondents	Valid percentage
Pesticide and herbicide residues in fresh produce	652	55.7
Hormone and antibiotic residues in meat	534	45.6
Illegal food additives in processed food	523	44.7
Hormone residues in fresh produce	303	25.9
Use of gutter oil*	277	23.7
Food adulteration in food (fake rice, fake eggs, etc.)	225	19.2
Sub-standard hygienic conditions of production and/or processing	204	17.4
Bacteria in food	174	14.9
Contamination of heavy metal and other chemicals from the soil	159	13.6
Genetically modified food	120	10.2
Water contamination	108	9.2
Excessive use of synthetic fertilizer	83	7.1
Other (please specify)	65	5.5

Gutter oil refers to recycled cooking oil from food waste from restaurants, sewer drains, grease traps and abattoir waste. Consumption of gutter oil will lead to various illnesses of the digestive system, such as stomach ache, diarrhoea, gastric cancer and colon cancer.

The results suggest that food contamination at the production stage was the biggest concern for urban residents in Nanjing. They were particularly concerned about the overuse of insecticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers in fruits and vegetables, as well as poor farming practices that result in unhealthy animals. The use of gutter oil in food preparation was as an even higher concern than food adulteration, which reflects the tremendous influence of specific food safety incidents on people’s perceptions. The results also suggested that practices that lead to ‘poisonous food’,³¹ such as illegal food additives and food adulteration, were more urgent concerns than substandard hygiene in food handling and bacteria in food. Although genetically modified food ranked low in the survey, the presence of genetically modified organisms in the food system was a significant part of the discussions throughout our interviews, particularly because of the intense debates over genetically modified food under way in China during our fieldwork in 2014.

In our interviews, many urban residents in Nanjing mentioned concerns over air, soil and water pollution, although no one specifically discussed how it related to food quality or safety. Several respondents mentioned the issue of environmental pollutants when justifying their purchases of foods with certain labels (such as hazard free, green or organic foods),³² or when discussing the many methods they used to protect themselves from environmental pollutants.

Poor farming practices were also a concern of some respondents. Before the fieldwork in 2014, there had been a prominent news story that involved dead pigs appearing in the Huangpu River, a Yangtze River tributary that flows through the inner city of Shanghai.³³ This scandal, occurring over a few years in several regions in China, reinforced distrust of large-scale livestock farming operations. Urban residents felt sceptical that monitoring mechanisms were effective in ensuring that meat in the market is safe or free from disease. Residents are left to use their own best practices at home to try and make the food safer for their families. To quote one resident:

I think pork is unsafe because many pigs are said to be sick in China, and we don’t know if pigs were healthy before they were slaughtered. I eat less meat. If my husband or daughter wants meat, I will boil it to try and make it safer. (An, 10 July 2014)

Aside from the production stage, urban residents in Nanjing were concerned primarily about food contamination that took place during food processing and the retail stage. In addition, the distrust of food was not confined to food coming from major food processing companies. Rather, it extended to many aspects of the food supply chain, from small-scale street and market vendors, to restaurant owners and food retailers, as well as market regulators that enforce food safety laws and regulations. Many interviewees commented on their distrust of places where they regularly buy food, including retail stores and wet markets. One participant discussed this issue:

Safety is definitely a problem. My husband and I ate bad ham and had to go to the hospital. We bought out of date ham from Suguo [a popular chain grocery store in Nanjing]. The store did not take responsibility for our sickness. Also, I feel uncomfortable buying food at this wet market actually, because another time I bought a cake that was out of date. I don’t trust the vendors anymore. (Chen, 25 July 2014)

In terms of the safety levels of various types of food, survey respondents were asked to identify three types of food, from a list of 40 commonly purchased and consumed food items, that they believed were the most unsafe to eat in Nanjing. Figure 2 shows respondents’ perceptions of the 10 most unsafe food items. Pork and vegetables, as the most commonly consumed foods in China, occupy the top spots on the list, followed by other types of meat and cooking oil. This result corresponds with the perception of ‘pesticide and herbicide residues in fresh produce’ and ‘hormone and antibiotic residues in meat’ as the top two food safety concerns, as shown in Table 2. In general, people were more concerned about the safety of meat, vegetables, and cooking oil than other foods such as noodles, rice, eggs, and dairy products.

Figure 2.

Perceptions of the top 10 most unsafe food items.

The perceived lack of safety of meats (particularly frozen meat) and prepared foods was also obvious in our interviews. An interviewee at Kexiang Market said:

I think cooked food in the market is unsafe, and [I] avoid it … same with fried foods. I also feel that salt and fat sold in bulk at the market is of lower quality, which makes it questionable. If it doesn’t have a package, I don’t trust it. I will also cook meat for a very long time to make it safe from bacteria, and soak vegetables to try to make them clean. (Xu, 17 July 2014)

In terms of the safety of meat, the survey results revealed that people trusted cooked meat the most, followed by fresh meat. Frozen meat, be it pork, beef, poultry or lamb, was considered the most unsafe to eat. This is probably due to the fact that the freshness of frozen meat is always unclear and thus its safety is suspect. Yet, interviews with shoppers at wet markets revealed differing results regarding the preference for frozen meat, as a response to the lack of refrigeration of fresh meat vendors in wet markets. After speaking to a pork vendor at Jinxianghe Trade Market, we found that many vendors purchased meat from an abattoir at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., and held it in coolers or on the counter until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. (Luo, 10 July 2014). Not all vendors at the market had access to refrigeration space, which meant that cuts could potentially be held at ‘danger zone’ temperatures (between 4 and 60 degrees Celsius) for 15 to 16 hours. Many meat vendors kept cuts on display on counters without barriers or sneeze guards, and simply fanned cuts of meat to prevent flies from settling on them. In some cases, if cuts were not sold, vendors might attempt to sell them again the following day (Luo, 10 July 2014). A market shopper at Nanwanying Vegetable Market expressed this viewpoint: ‘I feel the meat is unsafe in the summer when there are many flies. If I buy meat, I will only buy frozen meat’ (Chiang, 25 July 2014). The general misconception that freezing the meat can kill bacteria might also explain the preference for frozen meat. This contradictory perception of the safety of frozen meat exemplifies the complexity of food safety problems.

Causes of food safety problems and share of responsibilities

With this understanding of the food safety environment in Nanjing, we also delved into perceptions about causes and responsibilities for the food safety crisis. Causes and responsibilities are inherently connected dimensions of consumer perceptions. In one survey question, we asked respondents to choose three causes from a list of 10. The result, as shown in Table 3, resonates with the assertion by Ann Veeck and colleagues³⁴ that Chinese consumers often blame small producers and the government for the worsening food safety conditions but overlook the role of structural changes in the food economy. The top three causes identified are all associated with the roles of government. The general belief seems to be that if regulations were more strictly enforced, food safety problems would be greatly mitigated.

Table 3.

Most important causes of food safety problems.

Causes	Frequency	Valid percentage
Government has not enforced food safety regulations effectively	756	64.8
Punishments for violators of food safety laws/regulations are not strict enough	680	58.3
There are too many small producers and/or processors to monitor	460	39.5
Low suzhi (integrity) of food processors	455	39.0
Inspectors are not performing their duties	342	29.3
Low suzhi (integrity) of food producers	285	24.4
Consumers’ preferences (appearance, lean meat, blemish free, etc.) encourage illegal use of chemicals	98	8.4
General lack of trust in our society	97	8.3
Price of food is too low, which encourages producers/processors to use illegal methods to reduce their costs	90	7.7
Consumers have no control of, or know too little about, their food	61	5.2
Other	47	4.0

Associated with this is a discourse, widely used in daily conversations, about suzhi (素质), which literally means ‘quality’. Suzhi has been employed in accusations towards peasants for the lack of conscientious behaviour and capacity.³⁵ In this way, suzhi has become a key discourse and a substitute for ‘social class’ in the post-Mao era, or ‘a codeword for a system of thinking’³⁶ in debates on Chinese sociopolitical and cultural transformation.³⁷ With its multiple meanings and interpretations, low suzhi is also commonly used to characterize people’s lack of integrity, civility, or discipline.³⁸ The survey results show that low integrity of food processors and producers is considered a major cause of food safety problems.

Another important message revealed in these results is that deep structural problems associated with food safety were generally viewed as less important. For example, the ‘rapid decline of social trust’ was perceived by only 8.3 per cent of respondents as an important cause. Causes associated directly with consumers such as consumer preference and the disconnection between consumers and food also received relatively less attention. The low food price, which encourages producers and processors to use illegal methods for profits, also received fewer votes. Other causes mentioned by survey respondents include corruption, deficiencies in laws, environmental pollution, and false media reports.

One survey question also asked respondents who, in their view, should be most responsible for addressing food safety problems. The results (Table 4) show that 70.3 per cent of respondents believed that the government, including local and central government, should be the most responsible stakeholder for addressing the current food safety situation. While the central government – always seen in the Chinese context as a combined entity comprised of the State Council, ministries and agencies at the ministry level, and the National People’s Congress – is responsible for legislation and supervising local government in enforcing the laws and regulations, local governments are responsible for the enforcement of laws and regulations and monitoring food safety problems. The fact that local governments were considered to be more responsible than the central government reveals that most people believed the enforcement of laws and regulations and the monitoring process were bigger problems than the legislation itself, as argued by Hong-Gang Ni and Hui Zeng.³⁹

Table 4.

Perceptions of responsibilities for addressing food safety problems.

Players	Frequency	Valid percentage
Local government	510	43.5
Central government	314	26.8
Food processors	91	7.8
Agri-food companies	74	6.3
Inspectors	66	5.6
Other (please specify)	34	2.9
Retailors	28	2.4
Vendors	26	2.2
Large-scale farmers	13	1.1
Small farmers	11	0.9
Consumers	5	0.4
Total	1172	100

Food processors rank third on the list of stakeholders responsible for addressing food safety problems. This corresponds with the significant high level of concern for ‘illegal additives in processed food’ shown in Table 2. All food handlers along the food supply chain were considered responsible to various extents for food safety problems. Yet, farmers, regardless of size, were considered less responsible compared to agri-food companies and other food handlers along the food value chain. However, it was unclear whether this implied that Nanjing residents blamed agri-food companies for food hazards associated with fresh produce and meat.

Interviews with shoppers at wet markets revealed both pessimistic and optimistic views regarding the government’s responsibility and capacity for ensuring food safety. Many interviewees felt that poor enforcement of government regulation is a major source of blame. Though blame was also placed on farmers for using chemicals, the general consensus was that government was the most responsible for ensuring proper practices in agriculture. According to one resident (Zheng, 10 July 2014), ‘Government should pay more attention to the drivers of food contamination, for example the overuse of chemicals and pesticides. The farmers are using too many chemicals.’ Yet, many residents felt that the problem could not be solved solely through regulation and monitoring. As one interviewee (Leung, 10 July 2014) explained, ‘Both farmers and the government are responsible for the food safety issues we see today. The system is so broken that there is not one area for regulation, but a mess of problems for which there are no solutions.’

Despite significant shifts in food distribution, monitoring, and regulation in Nanjing in recent years, residents remained pessimistic about improvements. The efforts of government to improve food quality and safety were seen by many as ‘superficial’, and put in place simply for appearances. An interviewee (Li, 8 July 2014) at Kexiang Vegetable Market argued, ‘The regulations are superficial … the food looks good on the shelves, but likely is not very safe because of chemicals, which are unseen.’

Further, not all markets or market vendors abided by the rules of proper labelling for quality assurance, nor did they all properly monitor the origins of the food sold in the market. On many occasions, the system of regulation was not uniformly implemented or regulated citywide. This lack of homogeneity in food regulation was a source of anxiety,⁴⁰ because it means a lack of reliability for consumers. Meanwhile, some residents felt optimistic that with improved information sharing (through social media and television for example), people were becoming more aware about food system issues and could therefore place more pressure on governmental bodies to improve food quality. One resident supported this sentiment:

I think government regulation is [the] most effective [way] to increase the food quality in Nanjing. People are more educated because of the media – they know more about health and have higher standards. Sanitation has improved a lot in wet markets. (Jiang, 8 July 2014)

Coping strategies in the face of food safety risks

As Jakob Klein noted, ‘the way people make sense of and act upon risks related to food cannot be assumed, but needs to be investigated empirically’.⁴¹ Taking up this call, our study examined Nanjing residents’ coping strategies in both quantitative and qualitative ways. Fred Gale and Kuo Huang pointed out that the demand for food quality in China fuelled the growth of modern food retail and sales of premium-priced food.⁴² We argue that the popularity of modern food retail and quality-labelled food exemplify the coping strategies adopted by consumers to tackle food safety risks. Coping strategies that we identified include two major categories – strategies for food access (i.e. identification of safety, freshness and authenticity, selection of food sources) and strategies for food preparation (i.e. mitigation of food safety risks). Interestingly, in our interviews, many people discussed the methods they used to navigate the perceived risks, but most could not explain or justify their practices. Nevertheless, these practices did provide a certain degree of assurance eagerly sought by consumers to cope with tremendous uncertainties. When we asked survey respondents to identify the ones they used from a list of 24 different strategies, their responses demonstrate the very diverse range of practices (see Table 5).

Table 5.

Various coping strategies* used to navigate food safety risks.

Categories		Strategies	Frequency	Valid percentage
Food access	Safety	Avoid food with too ‘perfect’ an appearance	658	58.1
	Safety	Intentionally buy vegetables with insect holes	383	33.8
	Freshness	Buy more local food	655	57.9
	Authenticity	Read nutrition labels and/or ingredients when I buy packaged food	786	68.7
		Buy certain brands of food	619	54.1
		Buy food that is traceable	215	19.5
	Selection of food sources	Only buy certain types of food from certain outlets	653	57.1
		Get food directly from farmers I trust	628	54.7
		Changed the place where I buy certain type of food due to food safety concerns	558	48.7
		Get food directly from my rural relatives	469	40.6
		Buy food from the Internet	116	10.1
	Selection of labelled food	Buy certified green food	531	47.5
		Buy certified hazard-free food	521	46.8
		Buy certified organic food	448	40.1
	Other	Ask sellers questions to inspect food quality	666	58.2
		Check the origin of the food	598	52.3
		Follow instructions of experts to determine what to eat	490	43.1
		Grow your own food	229	19.6
Food preparation		Soak fresh produce/fruits in water before using it to remove chemical residues	916	79.8
		Soak fresh produce/fruits in water before using it to kill bacteria	762	67.3
		Wash fresh produce/fruits with rice water to remove chemical residues	479	41.7
		Wash fresh produce/fruits with salt or other cleaner to remove chemical residues	412	35.7
		Wash fresh produce/fruits with rice water to kill bacteria	371	32.6
		Wash fresh produce/fruits with salt or other cleaner to kill bacteria	374	32.5
Other			77	6.8

These strategies were derived from interviews carried out by one of our authors in Nanjing in the summer of 2014. We also built on our observations during fieldwork in Nanjing from 2010 to 2015, when researching on China’s rapidly developing ecological agriculture sector.

Residents in Nanjing employed various strategies during both food access and food preparation processes to determine the safety, freshness and authenticity of food purchased and reduce the risk. Many of these strategies were also identified in Jakob Klein’s studies in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province. Certain retailers and brands were sources of trust for consumers. More than 50 per cent of respondents would seek alternative food sources such as buying more local food or buying directly from farmers they trust. Ecologically labelled food was another source of trust for many for its safety, health and taste features as depicted by Klein.⁴³ Organic food, despite its most stringent level of requirements among the three ecologically labelled foods in China (organic, green food, and hazard-free food), was less recognized for its safety than the other two certifications, while green food was the most recognized type. This is further verified by our other survey questions regarding the safety and healthfulness of the three ecologically certified foods: 55.5 per cent of respondents believed that green food was safer, compared to 52.6 per cent for organic food. This indicates a lack of knowledge about the certifications and the most easily assumed safety characteristic from the word ‘green’ when there was a lack of other information. The survey also revealed that 19.6 per cent of respondents grew their own food, which suggests a modest level of engagement in urban agriculture in Nanjing as a response to food safety risks.

In terms of food preparation strategies, soaking fresh produce and fruits in water were the most commonly identified strategy in our survey, while rice water, salt and other cleansers were also commonly used to treat food before cooking. Interestingly, removing chemical residues was more of a concern than killing bacteria. This indicates a shifting focus from food hygiene towards the more complicated food safety issue in China.⁴⁴ Survey respondents also mentioned other strategies, including blanching; boiling food before cooking; washing fruits and vegetables with disinfectants, baking soda or flour; using various machines (e.g. vegetable washer and ozone machine) to treat food; peeling fruits and vegetables; making their own cooking oil (in response to the threats of ‘gutter oil’); and reducing their purchases of processed food.

Interviews with wet market shoppers revealed more diverse strategies of determining the freshness of food. For example, one resident indicated that when purchasing tomatoes, she looked for rings on the ‘blossom end’ of the fruit. She believed that if it had rings, it meant chemical fertilizers were used to grow the fruit, and that it should be avoided (An, 10 July 2014). Although worms are said to be an indicator that the foods are safe from agrochemicals, a few respondents also expressed their suspicions that vendors who were wise to this preference would purposely place worms on vegetables, to give them the appearance of being safe, that they have not been sprayed. Other shoppers claimed that by choosing the brightest coloured fruits and vegetables, or by choosing only those in season, that they were able to ensure a high quality selection. Further, many people found it important to purchase only foods that were still caked in mud – and not sprayed with water – to ensure freshness and high nutrient content. This is because vegetables that are completely clean and sprayed with water are thought to be older than they appear, and could have been sitting on the shelf for several days before being purchased. Some interviewees also claimed that they could simply look at the stem of the fruit or vegetable to tell its freshness – if the stem was dry, then they knew it was not fresh.

Generally, the quality and safety of meat was of greater concern to residents than the quality and safety of vegetables. In order to protect themselves from contaminated meat, some people stated that they would only purchase frozen meats, rather than meat that had potentially been sitting out on the counter for long periods of time. Conversely, many residents also commented that they did not trust frozen meat, as it was impossible to tell its freshness. Therefore, some preferred to purchase live animals such as poultry, and butcher it themselves at home. However, since the bird flu epidemic in China in recent years, it is no longer legal to purchase live poultry in many cities including Nanjing, and only live fish and shellfish are available at the market. Conversely, many people have commented that they simply avoided meat altogether since the news of ‘fake meat’ on the market. Several large enterprises were found to sell pork disguised as beef with the use of chemical additives and pumped with water. Others were found to be fabricating ‘mutton’ out of rat, mink, and fox meat. Several residents commented that they simply looked for a stamp of quality on the meat, or for a sign at the vendor stall that indicated it was a regulated product. However, many others also commented they had little faith in monitoring practices, and just accepted poor quality foods in both markets and grocery stores.

Food selection aside, the preparation of food has also been complicated by food safety concerns. Many people commented that it was important to soak vegetables in water for at least 30 minutes before cooking to ensure that they were free from chemicals or ‘poisons’ (as pesticides and chemical fertilizers were often referred to). Some residents stated that they would simply cook meat on very high heat to kill any bacteria or remove potential contaminants. Interestingly, in quite a few cases, Nanjing residents relied on vegetable washers, a type of machine that claims to be able to remove residues.

In addition, there is a general consensus that processed foods may be unsafe. Since the recent food safety scandals involving several well-known food processing companies, residents were committing themselves to ‘trusted brands’ that have good reputations. Residents also claimed that they preferred to purchase foods from larger stores, such as supermarkets, rather than wet markets because the former are better regulated and better capable of ensuring the safety of food. As for foreign brands, some residents expressed conflicting opinions about foreign big companies, and were suspicious of foreign enterprises. Some felt strongly opposed to Taiwanese or Japanese brands sold in Chinese shops and markets (though possibly more because of historical political tension than food safety threats). Since the melamine scandal broke out among domestic dairy producers in 2008, imported foods like milk powder have been more trusted than Chinese national brands.

Sources of trust

The alarming distrust concerning food safety in Nanjing makes the sources of trust a compelling issue to explore. The survey compared potential sources of trust, including certification labels, the QS (Quality and Safety) label, brands, appearance and provenance of food, as well as reputation and integrity of producers and retailers. Although food safety scandals severely deteriorated consumer confidence in the formal institutionalized quality assurance system,⁴⁵ certifications and QS labels are still convenient sources of trust for consumers. In our survey, 62.5 per cent of respondents reported that certification labels made them more confident in the safety of food, followed by QS label (44.1 per cent) and brands (42.4 per cent). In contrast, only 22.5 per cent of respondents believed that the provenance of food would make it trustworthy in terms of safety. Reputation and integrity of retailers (33.3 per cent) and producers (30.8 per cent) and the appearance of food (27.9 per cent) had relatively more influence on people’s perceptions of the safety of a food product.

Discussion and conclusion

The quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data presented in this article comprehensively characterize perceptions of food safety among Nanjing residents against the backdrop of China’s rapidly changing food economy. This article interrogated the food safety conundrum in various dimensions by examining consumer interpretations of the general environment of food safety, causes and responsibilities for the problems, coping strategies, and potential sources of trust. The article compared the significance of various factors within each of these dimensions. It not only looked at the degree and sources of fear but also probed into everyday approaches that people have relied on to cope with the threats.

On the whole, residents felt that food monitoring and regulation in Nanjing was not adequate to ensure the safety of food sources. They felt vulnerable and exposed to threats of unsafe food from the production stage of the food supply chains, especially from the overuse of agrochemicals in farming and from poor farming practices that result in unhealthy or diseased animals and environmental pollutants. Residents also felt vulnerable to food safety threats from the food processing, preparation, and retail stages of the food supply chain. Pork and vegetables were perceived to be the least safe foods.

There seems to be a high level of consensus that the ineffective enforcement of regulations of the government, especially local governments, was the major cause of food safety problems and thus the government should be the most responsible player to address the problems. In contrast, deep structural issues such as the increasing distance between consumers and their food received very little recognition. As Tables 3 and 4 show, most consumers did not see themselves as at all responsible. Respondents’ views of themselves as exempt from responsibility in the food safety crisis make it more probable that they should stand back and wait for the state to respond. This reliance on the state has been cultivated partly by the long tradition of state control over society in China.⁴⁶ Although grass-roots and civil society initiatives have been playing influential roles in fostering food safety and food security in other countries,⁴⁷ their roles in China are limited to providing alternative food sources and, increasingly, public awareness.⁴⁸ These actors have not played a notable role in negotiating with the state on regulatory structures. The public understanding of the food safety problem tends to be overly simplified, reducing a complex problem to dysfunctions of the state, with no recognition of the role of consumers in both generating⁴⁹ and solving the problem.

The study also found that residents have developed methods of food procurement and food preparation to cope to some degree with food safety anxiety. Residents look out for evidence that food is either unsafe or not healthy by seeking indicators that synthetic chemicals were used in the production of the food, or watching for signs that food was not fresh. Residents have also developed various food preparation methods in an attempt to make the food safer for consumption. Many of these same techniques have been documented in other Chinese cities. These coping strategies, as responses to the food safety crisis, constitute a critical part of the everyday food knowledge and experience of urban residents in China.

We argue that the structural changes under way in China’s food system have been shaping the major problems and causes of food safety issues. The perceptions of food safety problems as shown in Table 2 reveal that the food safety problems of greatest concern all relate to the chemical intensive agricultural production approach, which is a reflection of structural changes in China’s food system (i.e. increased reliance upon chemical input in agriculture). Looking beyond the empirical data, we believe that residents’ perceptions of major food safety problems and their causes also reflect a heightened uncertainty resulting from an increasingly industrialized and delocalized food value chain. As more players are involved in the modern food supply chain – as it becomes increasingly elongated – monitoring and quality control become more challenging. Lack of information reinforces the uncertainty; people’s narratives on food safety problems frequently emphasize that ‘no one knows’. The concentration of population in cities, through urbanization, and people’s distancing from food production also contribute to these risks.⁵⁰ Our data show that, to cope with food safety challenges, 55 per cent of respondents got food directly from farmers or sources that they trusted. This can mean buying food from certain vendors at wet markets. Moreover, 52 per cent of respondents checked the origin of food to ensure its safety. This significance of individual connections with place suggests that although short food supply chain initiatives such as community supported agriculture and buying clubs are quite marginal amongst various daily strategies in China, they still have great potential in enhancing food safety.

In contrast to the structural changes that shape food safety perceptions, the various coping strategies identified in this article indicate the volition of people while being subject to the macro structural changes of the food system and the wider economy. From an ‘agency-oriented’ perspective, these strategies – albeit needing more rationalization for their efficacy – demonstrate the considerable latitude through which Nanjing residents proactively exercise their agency. In addition, while most strategies are commonly practised, individual residents have their own preferences. Although this study did not look at the variance, the selective adoption of strategies adds another layer to understanding their agency. These factors affecting people’s choice of coping strategies warrant further study.

It is also vital to investigate the implications of everyday food safety perceptions and practices for food-related policies and governance priorities. The fact that chemical residues in vegetables and meats were considered the most serious food safety problems point to the urgency of shifting to ecological ways of food production, while enforcing standards of quality control more strictly. Despite the efforts of Chinese government in recent years to curb the increasing use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in its agriculture sector,⁵¹ the support for ecological agriculture development is rather limited, or as Steffanie Scott et al. argue, ‘superficial’ and socially exclusionary towards small-scale farmers.⁵² People are generally unsure about many issues related to food safety and quality, as exemplified by the common confusion over different certification standards. They also demonstrate little awareness of structural problems linked to the increasingly industrialized food system and their own roles in mitigating some of its consequences.⁵³ This calls for more transparent information-sharing schemes and effective food education strategies to enhance the overall ‘food literacy’ of the general public.⁵⁴

This study raises many questions for further investigation. For instance, the survey did not collect demographic information of respondents per se (but rather about their household more generally). Moreover, when we asked the questions, we asked about the perceptions of and strategies used by the respondents and their households (which means any members of their households). Therefore, it is difficult to correlate socio-economic characteristics of individual respondents with their answers, as most consumer studies have done. However, such correlations between food safety perceptions and socio-economic status and the demographics of households merit further analyses. In addition, it is important to examine how exposure to news and social media on food safety issues has affected people’s perceptions and coping strategies. It is also worthwhile to further analyse in what ways the relationship between consumers and the state, as reflected in the data, might be reflected in and shaped by people’s food-safety-related perceptions and strategies. It remains to be seen how the perceptions and strategies explored in this article will change over time as China’s food system continues to evolve.

Footnotes

Notes

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