The evolution of food safety risk communication: Models and trends in the past and the future

Management of risks and uncertainty played an important role in the rise of human cultures from the beginning. Long journey has been taken from deciphering spiritual signs to the usage of artificial intelligence. Communication about risks also went through an evolutionary path and became highly specialised. During previous decades, food safety risk communication developed to be a distinguishable and well-grounded profession. Based on literature of the last 40 years, the evolution of food safety risk communication is presented from the perspectives of consumer involvement, methodological approach, and challenges. Expected future trends are also unfolded during the analysis. The paper identifies 5 + 1 stages in the evolution of food safety risk communication: Pre-risk communication era, Deficit model, Dialogue model, Partnership model, and Behavioural insight model. Expected future trends are summarised as a 6th stage, called Controlled risk environment model. The models are separated by level of consumer involvement and methodological approach. Consumer science played a crucial role in the evolutionary procedure. Despite the observed advancement between the stages, the application of each communication model might have justification under certain circumstances. In practice, the different stages have no clear boundaries, and the models can overlap. An organisation can even move on to the next phase by skipping a previous evolutionary step.