Awareness of irradiated food consumption between Brazil and Argentina

According to IAEA records from 2021, 68 countries authorize the sale of one or more types of irradiated food. In 2017, there was a lack of validated instruments to assess awareness of the consumption of irradiated foods in Brazil. Thus a study was carried out that resulted in the construction of a valid, robust instrument adapted to Brazilian culture, with the aim of assessing collective awareness of the consumption of irradiated foods, called the 'Awareness Scale on Consumption of Irradiated Foods (ASCIF)'. As for the ASCIF, it was observed that this instrument showed good evidence of validity. Four factors were found safety of irradiated foods (S), concepts (C), labeling (L) and awareness (A), which represent the 31 items of the instrument. In 2023, a new experiment was conducted to validate the ASCIF instrument for the Argentine population, which showed similarities and differences between the knowledge of consumers from the two Latin American cultures. The general objective of this study was to compare the responses of Argentinians and Brazilians to the Awareness Scale on Consumption of Irradiated Foods (ASCIF). (author)