Risk communication and fatty fish: the case of the Swedish Food Agency

Abstract

This paper evaluates Swedish Food Agency’s communication strategy with regard to the benefits and risks associated with eating Baltic Sea fatty fish. It concludes that the agency is doing a rather good job in this area. Its levels of trust among the Swedish public remain high. The 2012–2013 campaign should be seen as a success especially with such a limited budget. A number of ‘at risk’ groups now have a better understanding about the risks of eating too much fatty fish from the Baltic Sea. What is concerning, however, is that a large number of females of childbearing age still have not picked up the agency’s message on this issue.

Keywords:

• Risk communication
• Swedish Food Agency
• Baltic Sea
• herring

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Asa Boholm, Frederic Bouder and Dominic Way, as well as a number of members of the communications department at the Swedish Food Agency for commenting on an earlier version of this paper. Excerpts of this paper were first presented at the Society for Risk Analysis Europe annual meeting in Bath, UK 21 June 2016. The paper was in part funded by a grant from the Swedish Research Foundation FORMAS, via the University of Gothenburg, where the author is a visiting professor.