Background: Food can also be contaminated during storage, processing, packaging, distribution, and commercialization. At the same time, current food production systems such as agriculture, animal farming, aquaculture, and fisheries all have an impact on environmental health and emerging zoonosis. Thus, food safety has become a global and important issue around countries, and no exception for the Chinese.

Objectives: This study explores the most concerning issue from environmental and social aspects for contemporary consumers. The aim of this paper is to determine the key factors affecting food safety and proffer effective intervention strategies against food-related problems for the Chinese. Furthermore, finding out the most concerning food communication issue, food type, and the reasons for affecting the concern level in China are proposed.

Methods: The Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) data for Chinese was used for analysis. Participants were adult consumers aged 18 and above from Beijing and Hefei, mainland China. Data were collected from May 9th to 24th, 2017. Face-to-face surveys and questionnaires related to contemporary food safety issues and types were analyzed.

Results: A total of 3,090 results were analyzed. Approximately of 22.5% (n = 2088) of Chinese consumers indicated that they trusted information from interpersonal communication for circulating health-related information. They mainly rely on doctors, family members, and friends. Food safety was maintained as the highest concern (39.8%, n = 1,237) among 11 environmental and societal risks. In addition, the most concerning food type can be clustered into two types of worries or not. The food type includes the nutrition we all need, such as protein and dairy is in the not worried category. On the other hand, food like snacks, soft drinks, and convenience food which are not necessary for humans are more worried by Chinese consumers. The concern of food type was found to be associated with geographical region mostly (β = .197), followed by education level (β = .054).

Conclusions: The study shows that certain food groups are highly concerned regarding their local food safety situation which is relatively complicated. Compared with the previous research by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, it is supported that living in different regions mediates food perception and risk concerns, while different levels of income and education moderate the relationship. The food safety environment in China might be considered stable, positive or less worried, but acknowledging that many problems still remain unsolved is important. We researchers are encouraged to continue to work on food risk management and food communication to reduce the concern about food safety in the future.