When I was young I lived on two foods: Oatmeal and Peanut Butter. I still love both but now they are more “comfort foods” trotted out when I need to sooth my emotion state.
The current salmonella outbreak, and consumer reaction, points to a problem that often hinders pandemic influenza communication efforts: People do not invest the time to be well informed on most issues.
This from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:
All peanut butter makers paying price for outbreak [excerpt]
Sales have plummeted despite safety assurances.
Many consumers, apparently disregarding the fine print of the salmonella outbreak and food recall caused by a Georgia peanut plant, are swearing off all brands of peanut butter, driving down sales by nearly 25 percent.
The drop-off is so striking that brands such as Jif are taking the unusual step of buying ads to tell shoppers that their products are not affected, and giving them a coupon to make sure they do not learn to live without a staple that almost every child loves — and more than a few of their parents, too.
Given the steady stream of headlines since mid-January about one of the largest food contamination scares in the nation’s history, the companies whose products are not being recalled could have a difficult time winning over people like Guadalupe Vasquez.
On Friday, she and her three young children kept walking past shelves of peanut butter at a grocery store in Bellaire, Texas. “The news shows say don’t buy it and I won’t buy it,” said Vasquez, adding that she normally buys a jar each week. “I’m very fearful of salmonella.”
[snip]
The contaminated peanut butter traced to the Georgia plant represents a small percentage of the $800 million in annual sales by the peanut butter companies in the United States. But the industry’s public relations problem is unlikely to ease anytime soon.
Americans are often reactionary, and equally as often, ill informed.
I first became aware of “Rational Ignorance” when I read the CATO Institute 2004 Policy Analysis When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy by Ilya Somin [PDF here]. Generally, “rational ignorance” applies to issues that require more time to become informed about than the benefits of being informed produce.
My enjoyment of peanut butter led me to become informed enough about the salmonella outbreak to reach the understanding that the jars of peanut butter in my pantry are safe, but consumer products produced with peanut butter paste may not be, and thus warrant my avoidance. Perhaps other consumers feel that it’s just easier to avoid all peanut butter. It’s a personal choice, rational or otherwise.
But, what about the issue of a future influenza pandemic? An issue that is complicated and nebulous.
We have federal, state, and local officials [albeit, not nearly enough] valiantly attempting to get each of us to become informed and personally prepared for what is viewed a likely eventuality, an influenza pandemic, possibly of the severe variety. A severe pandemic has come to be called a “category 5 pandemic”, modeled after the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane severity.
575 people have been sickened, eight fatally, by the salmonella tainted peanut butter products, and that has influenced the peanut butter buying habits of nearly 25% of the product’s consumers. Yet, the possibility that nearly 2 million US residents could die in a severe pandemic has not registered for so many. An interesting, and telling, difference in reaction… and action.
Just two months ago I was stunned by someone’s ignorance of what pandemic influenza was, much less the fact that one might be in our near future. Until I sat listening to what this gentleman said I had been of the belief that people chose to be ignorant of the issues, chose their version of “rational ignorance”, yet I found myself confronted by a highly intelligent, though uninformed, person. This person had not made a conscious “choice” to be ignorant of the issue; rather he was just completely unaware.
This morning as I read the peanut butter story above I couldn’t help but wonder how many US residents would be ignorant of the salmonella tainted peanut butter recall (whether well informed on it or not). Then thinking about all the people who are still unaware of the threat of pandemic influenza and the actions officials expect them to be undertaking on their own behalf in anticipation of such a potential. I’m betting most would know about the salmonella and too few the (possible) future pandemic.
If, per chance, anyone reading this is not aware of those actions please visit PandemicFlu.gov’s Individuals and Families Planning web portal, an official US Federal Government website.
Flublogia 1 actively works to minimize the number of people who will be caught unaware – and unprepared – if/when the next influenza pandemic strikes.
After all, ignorance, whether rational, irrational, intentional, or unintentional, is still ignorance, and when it comes to pandemic influenza officials and manufacturers will not be recalling the virus and sequestering it to keep the public from becoming infected.
- the collective term for all those on the internet engaged in communicating and tracking avian influenza, see sidebar links ↩
