Citizen Participation Forum

Trust in the food chain is vital to encourage people to eat more healthily and sustainably.

The Citizens Participation Forum (CPF) is providing us with key insights, needs and recommendations from consumers about building trust in the food chain. This work is helping us to gain a deeper understanding of consumer attitudes towards the food chain, particularly the role trust plays in that relationship.

EIT Food have been developing this project since 2018, where we ran a series of focus groups to explore trust in the food chain with groups of consumers in five countries. As our knowledge of the importance of trust in the food chain has developed, so has our need for a deeper understanding of the barriers and motivations, as well as potential solutions.

The latest CPF ran from late 2020 to early 2021 and involved an online community of 178 participants from 13 European countries, who engaged in open discussions, photo assignments, questionnaires, short polls and five live focus group sessions. The findings from these engagements are available in the Citizens Participation Forum Report Consumer trust in the food chain: exploring barriers and motivations.

In the report, the insights from consumers who took part in the 2020 CPF have been distilled into three key themes which play a role in influencing consumers to eat more healthily, more sustainably, and to be more open towards food innovation. These are being used, in conjunction with findings from the TrustTracker® project, to plan future dialogue and engagement with the EIT Food community.

Check out our closely related projects

• EIT Food TrustTracker®
• Increasing consumer trust and support for the food supply chain and for food companies