| Summary: | 碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 公共衛生學系碩士班 === 101 === The study aims to probe into college students’ opinions about Taiwan’s government implementing the policy of allowing American beef imports to contain ractopamine and into related factors of perceived risks of beef. With the method of purposive sampling, the research selected students of department of public health of Fu Jen Catholic University as its subjects, and a structured questionnaire was adopted to survey the subjects. The survey period was from June 1, 2013 to June 30, 2013. 168 students participated in the survey, and 152 of them actually completed the questionnaire, making a response rate of 90.48%. The main results of the study are as follows:
1. In the aspect of population characteristics, most were females, most students, nearly 60% of them lived with their families, the families of most students earned NTD 40,001 to 60,000 monthly, most of their fathers had college or junior college degrees, while their mothers had senior high school or vocational high school degrees. With regard to the frequency of checking food labels, most students thought that their mothers tended to have higher frequencies. In respect to socioeconomic status, most of them had medium socioeconomic status.
2. Regarding the four major policies of the government, the higher the level of population characteristics of a student was, the more positive attitude they held toward current policies and the higher their perceived risks of beef were. In addition, regarding the analysis of the importance and comprehension degrees of the four major policies, over 90% of the college students thought the importance of policies was important or very important, and 99.3% of the students thought the policy of establishing compulsory labeling of origin of both raw and cooked beef products was a top priority. However, regarding the order of importance, they ranked the policy of safely permissible quantities of ractopamine residue first, which illustrated that when the college students purchased beef products, they took their health and food safety into consideration, and that they thought the policy of safely permissible quantities of ractopamine residue was more important than that of establishing compulsory labeling of origin of both raw and cooked beef products instead. Moreover, from the comprehension degrees of the four major policies, approximately 60% of the students were clear or very clear about the policy of establishing compulsory labeling of origin of both raw and cooked beef products, but only 30% to 50% of the subjects were clear or very clear about the other three policies—safely permissible quantities of ractopamine residue, excluding animal offal from the list of permitted items for importation and retaining the ban on imports of foreign pork containing ractopamine residue. The result showed that the propaganda of the policy of allowing American beef imports to contain ractopamine of Taiwan’s government was not conspicuous.
3. In regard to perceived risks of beef, in the analysis of the importance and comprehension degrees of the four major policies and perceived risks of beef products, the importance of safely permissible quantities of ractopamine residue and that of retaining the ban on imports of foreign pork containing ractopamine residue did not reach a significant level, while the important and comprehension of the other policies reached a significant level. Moreover, the research results of the six perceived risks showed that the college students were worried the most that food had bad influence on their health (physical risk), being followed by the risk of feeling unhappy about purchasing bad products (mental risk) pertaining to the government’s policy of allowing American beef imports to contain ractopamine.
In conclusion, the college students thought the policy of safely permissible quantities of ractopamine residue was more important than that of establishing compulsory labeling of origin of both raw and cooked beef products. Therefore, in addition to the compulsory labeling of the place (country) of origin of American beef imports, the labeling of safely permissible quantities of ractopamine residue should also be provided to let consumers purchase beef products without any worry and eat happily and healthily.
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