Potential methods and approaches to assess social impacts associated with food safety issues

There is evidence to suggest that consumer confidence in the European food safety has declined in recent years. Consequently, the need to integrate multifaceted dimensions into food safety governance has been recognised, although a lack of established methodologies to appraise wider social impacts represents a challenge for implementation. The aim of the current paper is to review assessment methodologies currently available to assess social impact of potential food safety issues, and to identify where further research may be needed to meet gaps in existing knowledge regarding the collection of social impact data.