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Excessive average daily pork intake of Chinese residents increases the risk of obesity and related chronic diseases. Understanding consumers' preference for the Front-of-Package (FOP) labeling on fresh pork is of practical significance for designing an FOP labeling scheme that meets market demand and effectively guides moderate pork consumption. This study used the conditional logit model to reveal the stated preferences of 930 nationally representative respondents in China for FOP labeling attributes elicited by a choice experiment approach. The results indicated that respondents preferred the nutritional information to be printed in Chinese characters, the label size to be a quarter of the front package surface, the label color to be green, and the label price to account for 10% of the retail price of 500 g standard fresh pork. Moreover, these preferences were heterogeneous across the sample population due to respondents' different levels of education and trust in labeling. People with primary and junior high school education preferred nutritional information in Chinese characters, while those with junior high education and above preferred green labeling. The higher the respondents' trust in the labeling, the stronger their willingness to accept the appropriate FOP labeling price. Information campaigns and educational programs can be used to increase the acceptance of FOP labelling, particularly among consumers with low education levels and distrust of FOP labeling.
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INTRODUCTION: H7N9 avian influenza has broken out in Chinese poultry 10 times since 2013 and impacted the industry severely. Although the epidemic is currently under control, there is still a latent threat. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Epidemiological surveillance data for non-human H7N9 avian influenza from April 2013 to April 2020 were used to analyse the regional distribution and spatial correlations of positivity rates in different months and years and before and after comprehensive immunisation. In addition, positivity rate monitoring data were disaggregated into a low-frequency and a high-frequency trend sequence by wavelet packet decomposition (WPD). The particle swarm optimisation algorithm was adopted to optimise the least squares support-vector machine (LS-SVM) model parameters to predict the low-frequency trend sequence, and the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model was used to predict the high-frequency one. Ultimately, an LS-SVM-ARIMA combined model based on WPD was constructed. RESULTS: The virus positivity rate was the highest in late spring and early summer, and overall it fell significantly after comprehensive immunisation. Except for the year 2015 and the single month of December from 2013 to 2020, there was no significant spatiotemporal clustering in cumulative non-human H7N9 avian influenza virus detections. Compared with the ARIMA and LS-SVM models, the LS-SVM-ARIMA combined model based on WPD had the highest prediction accuracy. The mean absolute and root mean square errors were 2.4% and 2.0%, respectively. CONCLUSION: Low error measures prove the validity of this new prediction method and the combined model could be used for inference of future H7N9 avian influenza virus cases. Live poultry markets should be closed in late spring and early summer, and comprehensive H7N9 immunisation continued.
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Since 2013, China has implemented a nutrition label regulation that aims to provide essential nutrition information through nutrition facts tables labeled on the back of food packages. Yet, the relationship between people's nutrition knowledge and their nutrition label use remains less clear. This study adopted the structural equation modeling approach to analyze a nationally representative survey of 1500 Chinese individuals through the cognitive processing model, interrelated nutrition knowledge, attention to nutrition information on the nutrition facts table, comprehension of nutrition information, food choice and dietary intake. It was found that nutrition knowledge positively influenced attention to nutrition information; a better comprehension of nutrition information, which could benefit healthier food choices, did not relate to a higher level of attention to that information; dietary intake was affected significantly by nutrition knowledge, but it had little impact on food choice. The results signify that nutrition knowledge hardly supports nutrition facts table use among the Chinese people, mainly due to incomprehensible labeled information. Therefore, it emphasizes the need to enhance people's comprehension through front-of-package labels and corresponding smartphone applications.