Analysis of Consumers' Attitudes toward Traceability System on Dairy Products in China

Research background Dairy industry has a large potential in China. The production and consumption of milk in China have increased dramatically especially since 2000. However, recent food safety problems occurred in the livestock sector in China have somehow negatively affected consumers’ confidence in purchasing foods. Food safety problems in dairy industry have created lack of confidence among the public in buying dairy products. The new approach (A traceability system) to ensure the food safety is concerned by the government, producers and even consumers. Traceability system could be a new way to respect consumers’ right to choose safe and high quality food, and to provide production information to consumers, which may help consumers to have the confidence on the food they consume. Basically, one of the functions of traceability system is to monitor food producers in order to avoid food safety problems such as misuse of veterinary medicines and so on. In China, traceability system is been in the processing of introduction, which initially focused on the food safety during the Olympic Game 2008 but not only for Olympic Game (Fig. 1) At present, the traceability system can be found in some supermarkets and hyper marts in China, which mainly used on vegetable (Fig. 2). Analysis of Consumers’ Attitudes toward Traceability System on Dairy Products in China