1. Introduction

There is a common knowledge that Hong Kong is a "Gourmet Paradise" which is famous for gathering various kinds of foods all over the world. According to the information from Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (2009), there exist 1029 licensed cooked-food stalls (Fig 1-1) ¹ inside the market hawker center or in the street. Government have adapted some effective measures to decrease the amount of Street cooked-food stalls, by providing a ex-gratia payment ( EGP) to encourage the Cooked-food hawkers to give back their licenses to the government and move their stalls into the hawker center or food court inside the market.^2,7,8,9 Cooked-food stalls which sited in the crowded district sell thousands sets of food or snacks per day. No matter where these food stalls sited are exposure into the air with dust, bacteria or the other things that claimed to be unhygienic, or may lead to consequence of food-poisoning or others foodborne outbreaks. Many Consumers still buy these snacks almost once per day for fulfilling their appetite. In order to decrease the rate of food-poisoning cases from consuming food from street stalls, the main ways are to level up the citizens' awareness and acknowledgement of food safety and build up a public trust system to qualify the quality of the ready-to-eat stall snacks. Based on the Hong Kong government has a relatively complete set of operational control procedures and legistary on food safety issues, the next step is to provide a communication and health education between the sellers and the consumers.

Fig 1-1. Pleasant Environment Statistics, Markets and Stalls. 2007 to 2009 (from Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department)

2. Evidence

The first thing we need to figure it out, Hong Kong is not an agricultural city, the raw food ingredients we eat everyday are mainly imported from mainland China and others Southeast Asian countries. In such circumstances, we need to ensure that the food imported from other territories are safe to our human body. That’s why there are a wide range of examinations, legistary measures and quality control need to be done day by day. With reference to Singapore¹⁰ government, the quality and safety examination is strictly carried out. Comparing to the studies form West African countries or the Southeast Asian countries, the survillance system on food safety issues in Hong Kong is releatively perfect to the others.

According to the Summary on Causative Agents for Food Poisoning Outbreaks in 2010 from Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (Information as at 10 November 2010)³, 268 food-poisoning cases occured. Comparing to the numbers of food-poisoning outbreaks in 2009 (407 cases) and 2008 (619 cases) in Hong Kong, here it comes a tendency to decrease in food-poisoning outbreaks, which means some appropriate measures are carried out to the community and have a possitive affect.

But some cases contribute a serious negative impact on public such as the Sanlu Milk Powder Scandal ⁴occured in mainland China in 2008. Both the reputation of the food company and the trust of the public has been ruined. A study in UK ( A.E. Lobb et al 2005)⁵ gives us a good example that public relies on the offical statistics and information provided from the professionals and government, citizens’ likelihood of purchasing a food product is influenced by the messages they have received from the mass media. By the way, if there shows that the scientific information and messages provided from the official professionals are really trustworthy, and that’s why the manufacturers tend to gain the national and internatioanl standard operation procedures (SOP) licenses^6,11. A study of vended food stalls in West African countries (B Nicolas et al 2007) ⁶ ended that some SOPs to control the quality of vended food should be established. Strict quality management license such as HACCP, GAP, GMP is widely accepted by the public. For instance to the tainted milk scandal, they have a failed practice and managment during the process, to rebuild their reputation to the public, the Sanlu company should adapt a new quality control mechanism to qualify their product and processing. If the national license is not enought to fullfill the confidence of the public, they should let themselves to meet the international standards so that they can build up the reputation again to the public.

3. Approach

In order to take effective measures to prevent food-poisoning or foodborne outbreaks from consuming cooked-food from street food stalls, The key targets revelant to the street stalls food-poisoning prevention issues are mainly are: (1) the cooked-food sellers, (2) the consumers and (3) the government group. It is important to focus on the key targets to give them different levels of awarness, official guidelines, useful information and some quality control or tactics on them; which means to make them noticed and care of the part which they contact everyday, that makes the procedures go stable and easy to find out the problem and then fix it.

3.1  For Consumers:

Being the most passive one between the key targets, one-way communication can be applied on them. Consumers should be educated for some basic knowledge of food-poisoning, guidelines to choose the reliable food stores to consume ready-to-eat food products. It can be publicized through the health education leaflet, government offical website, TV commericals and some attactivities ( food safety quiz with bonus ) to make sure that consumers are educated and have certain level of awearness to the food safety issue. There is no doubt that some brainwashing advertising strategy is an effective way to carry out the message to the public; one of the advertisments of Nutrition Labelling Scheme, “10 sugar cubes equal to 50g sugar” (with picture)is vividly pointing out the main idea and widely covered all the subway and this message is well getting across to the public.

3.2  For Cooked-Food stall sellers:

Some certain extent of food process and hygiene quality control may be required, such as the regular sanitation check or investigation, the regular food sample examination, and safety food processing guidance, etc. Some up-to-date announcement and food safety information need to be given to the sellers. And some award schemes, commendation to some well-operated cooked-food sellers; and competitions revelant to food safety can also be held to encourgage the cooked-food sellers to reach the goals or take the improvement. Some releated industry organizations such as the cooked-food vendors associations can cooperate with the government, organize food-safety or food processing lectures or futher education to the cooked-food sellers.

When communicating with the cooked- food hawkers, government officials can adopt some measures to communicate with them,building the trust with them; let the food-hawkers know that government are not going to destroy their livelihoods, just to show them the accurate way to continue their small business and give them guidelines for what is not appropriate to do. By adopting interactive approaches to risk communication as following: 1)aids mutual learning; 2) identifies key issues; 3)can help foster trust.

3.3  For Government Department:

The most important thing is to build up a public trust to all citizens (both the food-sellers and consumers). Beside setting up the wide range of legislations, penalization; such as “Point Demerit System” in Singapore and “Demerit Points System: DPS” in Hong Kong Government. Though the punishment is not the mainpoint, the mainpoint is to let offenders to correct their mistake and learn the correct way; or encourgement, helping the food-retailers to meet the official standards, etc.The government also plays the main role in how to well communicate with consumers and retailers, i.e., to let the consumers feel confidence to what they consume.

By building up a comprehensive and detailed surveillance system, licensing and quality control to the cooked-food stalls sellers, to push them to meet the standard -- that means to help them to build up their confindence of their products. These approaches are mainly based on the risk accessment from the community and after analysing the data throughtout the research and investigation. According to the aims of the Center for Food Safety (CFS) of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department,¹⁴

Risk analysis comprises of three functions, namely, risk assessment, risk management and risk communication. Risk assessment forms the scientific basis for control actions. risk assessment consists of four components: (i) hazard identification, (ii) hazard characterisation, (iii) exposure assessment, and (iv) risk characterisation.

Following the steps of hazard identifying to evaluate the food-releated risk, and adapt the appropriate risk management to extinguish the risk, and farther development and prospective study for the issue. By analysing the data we can identify the problems and predict some certain food-releated risk, which may help us to define the tactics for prevention and risk management. From the European Food Safety Authority¹², they stated out a communications plan to format their risk communication :

            • understanding public perception of risk

            • development of EFSA public announcements

            • media relations

            • web

            • publications

            • Collaboration with national food safety authorities.

Regarding the consumers' need, survey on food safety releated issues need to be held to collect and analyse the useful up-to-date data. This analyzed data should be publizied to the official publications or upload to the government official website for public references. The food related government departments are also resposible for holding promotions to make sure that the public is educated: provide the latest food safety information: the information can be referenced by credible organizations¹⁵ (e.g. WHO, European Food Safety Authority: EFSA ) and drained out the suitable ones for the community, because the information and guidelines should be adjusted to be appropriate to the country.

These scientific advice is being spread via the mass media ( TV/ radio/ printed ads, official publications, internet etc. ), but it seems to be a one-way method, to ensure that public has awearness of the issue, survey and bonus activities to food safety will be more useful. All the methods mentioned above will encourage the communication between the citizens and the government.

Futher development after risk

After tackling with the food-releated risk, it’s also important to conclude the characteristics of the food-releated risk, and to develope a prospective precautions to prevent the recurrence of the similiar events. And the analysed statistics and study result can be (1) stored in the comprehensive data-base of the food safety website for references and educational use;

Summary on Causative Agents for Food Poisoning Outbreaks in 2011
(Information as at 10 December 2011)

Notes:
1. The figures of outbreaks and persons affected included both confirmed and suspected cases.
2. * Other agents included agents other than bacteria, chemicals, biotoxins, viruses; unknown agents and outbreaks pending classification.

(2) converted into messages and announcements to call attention to the public; and there is a technique that it’s important to transcript (translate) the official data to easily-read message for public (including consumers and food business people). For example, the most common risk of eating vendors’ food is food poisoning. Although the data of the food poisoning is clearly shown on the website of Centre for Health Protection (CHP), many times the data was not well translated into cautionary message; from the food poisoning outbreaks in 2011 of Hong Kong, almost 76% of the cases are bacterial food poisoning, with around 83% of people affected among all the cases. Due to the becterial food poisoning outbreaks percentage, though the death rate of bacterial food poisoning is not high, it still high in occurence. So the after risk development has the value of afterwards summary and prospective measures.

Besides the risk communication, the government acts as an important role not only to provide the data, deliver the food safety message to to the public and the stakeholders. Government should have early steps in research, risk assessment and risk management. And the process of the risk management can be well applied in the risk communication with the stakeholders: 

- Identifying what could go wrong

- Establishing what could be the consequences if things go wrong and how serious they would be

- Estimating the likelihood of occurrence

- Reducing the chance of things going wrong

- Reducing the consequences and seriousness of outcomes

- If things go wrong, stopping them getting worse

- Getting things back on course

- Learning from the experience and feeding back into the previous stages

4. Conculsion

There are several points need to be concerned throughout the food-related risk communication. First we need to make it clear that hazards are always releated to the public (including people and enviornment), we should often stay alert to our enviornment; eventhough consumers are the most passive ones among the community, street food stall consumers should be more sensitive and active to catch up the up-to-date scientific information and messages given by the trustful organizations, professionals and the government officials, whenever they only buy a package of fried won-tons. The cooked-food sellers should have a aware of moral to produce their products in a hygiene procedure and try to keep the cooked-food in a relatively safe and clean place; theyare also be more active to what they are doing, they should be well-communicated to both sides of consumers and food safety relevant officers. Food-sellers need to renew their knowledge of food safety from time to time, and that depends on the education from the government and releated industry organizations. The main role, the government should be well equipped for their function is make the connection the public and sellers and lead the communication role to help both sides communicated. The government should also be the one who gathers and digests the useful infomation collecting from other trust worthy units or organizations from inside or outside the countries, and keep scientific information exchanging to each other to increase the transparency of information¹⁵. However, all mentioned above still needs their cooperation and government legislation to result in a positive improvement.

1.       Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (2010) Pleasant Environment Statistics, Markets and Stalls. 2007 to 2009.  Available at : http://www.fehd.gov.hk/english/statistics/pleasant_environment/statistienh_2006_2009.html

2.       Lui Kwok Man ( 2010) Hawker control comparison Research of Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong . Administration Review of Public Administration of Macau, Number 88, 2010 No.2，307—320. Available at : http://www.safp.gov.mo/download/magazine/2010729%E4%B8%8A%E5%8D%8810363504-Lui%20Kwok%20Man.pdf

3.       Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (2010) Summary on Causative Agents for Food Poisoning Outbreaks in 2010. Available at : http://www.chp.gov.hk/en/data/5/10/26/43/417.html

4.        AUSTIN RAMZY AND LIN YANG (2008) Tainted-Baby-Milk Scandal in China. TIME. Available at :http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1841535,00.html

5.       A.E. Lobb , M. Mazzocchi and W.B. Traill (2005) Modelling risk perception and trust in food safety information within the theory of planned behavior. Department of Agricultural and Food Economics, The University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom. Department of Statistics, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

6.       Barro Nicolas ; Bello Abdoul Razack ; Itsiembou Yollande (2007). Street-Vended Foods Improvement: Contamination Mechanisms and Application of Food Safety Objective Strategy: Critical Review. Pakistan Journal of Nutrition 6 (1): 1-10, 2007 ISSN 1680-5194 © Asian Network for Scientific Information

7.       Paper for the HK LegCo Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene-LC Paper No. CB(2) 1860/04-05(03),  (2005). Distributed to street food stalls in the fixed-pitch (cooked or Light Refreshment) Hawker License. Hong Kong Legislative Council. Available at : http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr04-05/chinese/panels/fseh/papers/fe0614cb2-1860-03-c.pdf

8.       Paper for the HK LegCo Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene - LC Paper No. CB(2) 2147/07-08(03),  (2008) . Legislative Council Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene Committee Hawker Licensing Policy Review  Hong Kong Legislative Council. Available at : http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr07-08/chinese/panels/fseh/papers/fe0610cb2-2147-3-c.pdf

9.       Paper for the HK LegCo Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene –LC Paper No. CB(2) 2296/01-02(06) , (2002) Cooked Food Stall Hawker License. Hong Kong Legislative Council. Available at :http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr01-02/english/panels/fseh/papers/fe0624cb2-2296-06-e.pdf

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12.    EFSA.(2006) Risk communication - Risk Communications strategy and plans. Available at: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/keydocs/docs/commstrategy.pdf

13.    Centre for Health Protection. (2004) Health Topics - Communicable disease - Food Poisoning  Available at: http://www.chp.gov.hk/en/content/9/24/43.html

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