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These findings and additional results on what drives food choices in Europe are available in the new “2025 Eurobarometer Survey on Food Safety in the EU”. EFSA conducts the survey every 3 years, which this year includes both the 27 EU Member States and 7 EU Candidate Countries at the same time.
Some 7 in 10 Europeans say they are personally interested in food safety and food safety comes third (46%) behind cost (60%) and taste (51%) among the factors influencing their food choices.
The relevance of cost has increased an additional 6 percentage points since 2022 and was the top factor in 20 EU Member States, underlying the ongoing strains on many people in Europe to make ends meet.
The most common reason for not following food safety information is taking it for granted that the food sold is safe, as stated by four in ten (41%) Europeans, followed by knowing enough to avoid or mitigate food risks (30%).
Increasing numbers of Europeans have heard about the 15 specific food safety topics they were asked about. The most familiar ones remain food additives (71%) and pesticides (67%) in line with previous survey results, but notable increases were seen in awareness of animal diseases (65%, up 5 percentage points), microplastics in food (63%, up 8 percentage points) and food poisoning (62%, up 5 percentage points).
The top concerns for consumers among these issues remain pesticides (39%), antibiotics/hormones/steroids in meat (36%) and food additives (35%) albeit their respective shares have fallen slightly since 2022.
Concern about microplastics in food saw the sharpest rise in focus with 33% of respondents, marking a 4 percentage points increase since the last survey.
Human health and animal/plant health – similarly to 2022, most EU citizens think that animal issues (53%) and environmental issues (51%) have a strong impact on human health, but for environmental and plant issues there has been a shift from strong to moderate impact.
Information channels - over half (55%) indicate television as one of their main sources of information about food risks, still the highest of all channels but 6 percentage points down on 2022. Exchanges with family, friends, neighbours, or colleagues (42%) and internet search engines (38%) come second and third. Online social networks and blogs are used by 25%, an increase of 4 percentage points on the last survey.
September 24, 2025/ EFSA/ European Union.
https://www.efsa.europa.eu
