The Hierarchy of Responsibility for Food Safety – the Case of Polish Consumers

Food safety is very important because it has a direct impact on human health. Food safety has to be assured at every stage of the food chain, from farm to fork. The food chain has many stages and actors: farmers, importers, food processing, storage, retailers, consumers. Lack of food safety can occur at any of these stages. Each food chain actor and institutions are responsible for food safety in the food chain. The paper presents the results of a survey made in 2020 in Poland among 2,000 consumers. Consumers were asked to assess the hierarchy of responsibility for food safety. According to the results it was shown that consumers perceive food producers to have the biggest responsibility for food safety (73.6% of indications), then food safety authorities/institutions (51.6% of indications), distributors and retailers (69.7% of indications), and themselves (73.8%).