Reference source International Food Information Council (IFIC)

Confidence in food safety hits record low: IFIC 2025 Food & Health Survey

Cited in 2 Likelier entries (1 risk, 1 decision).

Used in 2 entries

For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.

[1] PLA bioplastic harm Risk

Statistic

47% of US adults rank cancer-causing chemicals among their top-3 food safety concerns; 46% rank pesticide residues; foodborne illness leads at 50%

“"Foodborne illness from bacteria, such as E. coli, Salmonella, or Listeria, tops the list of consumer food safety concerns, with half of Americans (50%) ranking it among their top three. Cancer-causing chemicals (47%), pesticides (46%), and heavy metals (41%) follow closely."”
Calculation notes
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IFIC commissioned an annual survey of 3,000 US adults aged 18-80, fielded March 13-27, 2025 and weighted to US Current Population Survey demographics. The 47% cancer-causing-chemicals figure is the broadest umbrella that includes packaging-derived chemical concerns, of which PLA and compostable packaging is a small subset. Used as the perceived-side anchor; not used in the normalized probability calculation.
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Independence note: IFIC is an industry-supported nonprofit; methodology and weighting are publicly disclosed. Used here only for the perceived-side concern level, not for any safety or migration claim.

Source date: 2025-05-21 · Accessed: 2026-05-30
[2] Organic vs conventional Decision · inaction side

Statistic

46% of US adults rank pesticides and pesticide residues among their top-3 food safety concerns; cancer-causing chemicals at 47% and foodborne illness at 50% are the only higher-ranked concerns

“"Foodborne illness from bacteria, such as E. coli, Salmonella, or Listeria, tops the list of consumer food safety concerns, with half of Americans (50%) ranking it among their top three. Cancer-causing chemicals (47%), pesticides (46%), and heavy metals (41%) follow closely."”
Calculation notes
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IFIC 2025 Food & Health Survey, N=3,000 US adults aged 18-80, fielded March 13-27, 2025 and weighted to US Current Population Survey demographics for age, education, gender, race/ethnicity, and region. We use the 46% pesticide-residue concern figure as the inaction-side proxy: it brackets the share of US adults for whom the case for organic — sold to consumers primarily as a pesticide-avoidance pathway — has some current salience. This is NOT a regret measure. It is the share who rank pesticide residues as a top-3 concern; many of them already buy organic (and therefore cannot regret the conventional choice), while others have not connected their concern to a buying decision at all. Flagged as "(proxy)" in the display string. The number overstates true inaction regret because it includes current organic buyers; the actual share of conventional-buyer regret is bounded above by 46% and likely substantially lower.
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Independence note: IFIC is an industry-supported nonprofit with publicly disclosed methodology; the 2025 survey is independent of the Gallup 2014 poll and the Pew 2016 survey used on the action side. Industry sponsorship is a potential bias direction relevant to interpretation, though the 46% pesticide-concern figure runs against the food-industry interest in low concern levels and is consistent across multiple independent surveys.

Source date: 2025-05-21 · Accessed: 2026-05-30

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