FDA to study barriers to food label use

The FDA recently announced the intention to run an internet study to exploer the barriers to Food Label use.  This, following findings that food label use declined in sharply between 1196 and 2002, particularly with young people.

The goals of the study are to:

1. identify attitudes and beliefs among consumers toward health, diet and label usage
2. determine relationships between those attitudes and beliefs, as well as demographics, with food label use and non-use
3. and evaluate the relative importance of these attitudes between consumers of various age groups to determine whether barriers to label use differ between younger consumers and older consumers

source: http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480a10b64

The study is to be open to an internet panel of 43,000 people who may choose to participate on a voluntary basis – this must be a group of people that have signed on to offer voluntary feedback.  In total the FDA is expecting 9600 responses.

I personally, would love to participate in such a study, as i’m sure many of you food label experts out there would too – Marion Nestle agrees.

I propose that the FDA open the internet study up to the general public to participate – seeing as it is an internet study I can’t see any barriers to this.  And the results from the general public could be kept separate if that was an issue – although, even that comparison would be interesting.  I am sure were they to open the study up to the public and put out an open invitation, they would recieve tens of thousands of responses all of which would add more value to their existing study.

The study is on notice and open to the public for comment before 23rd October.  To make a comment click here.  Below is my comment requesting an open invitation to the survey.

¨To whom it may concern,

In regard to the ¨Internet Survey on barriers to Food Label Use¨, I would like to suggest that you open the survey up to public participation.

The FDA may be missing an opportunity to garner the opinions of dedicated professionals and enthusiastic and knowledgeable members of the public on this topic.

As the study is an internet study and there appears to be ¨no capital costs or operating and maintenance costs associated with this collection of information.¨ – it would seem financially feasible.

Furthermore, given an open invitation I believe that the existing communications infrastructure (online community) would be able to effectively promote the survey and result in thousands if not tens of thousands more responses.

Lastly, the public data could be kept seperately from the 43,000 internet panel data to ensure the original goals are at least preserved.

I can see no reason why this would not be possible but would appreciate your feedback if not so.

Sincerely,
Anton Xavier,
CEO FoodEssentials.com¨

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