Food safety -: public good

The paper seeks to analyse the understanding of food safety by consumers of agro food products in the Nitra region. The food safety is here understood as the complex of precautions concerning the plant health protection, veterinary problems, animal health protection and animal welfare, concerning the foodstuffs and feeds. Realization of these precautions leads to the safety of all the parts of the food chain and the final foodstuff. Health, good living level and the protection of economic and social interests of people are the basic attributes for the evaluation of the role of foodstuff. That is why the food policy of the SR and the EC is also subordinated to these attributes. General principles and claims concerning food safety are set in the decree of the European Parliament and the Commission (EC) No. 178/2002. Relevant claims of this key horizontal regulation are already in use since January the 111 2005, and create the common basement for precautions concerning foodstuffs and feeds, and legally ensure the complex approach to the food safety including all the direct and indirect impacts on food safety, animal health and some environmental issues. The food safety is a public good in the SR as it is characterised by non-excludability from consumption and non-existence of rivalry in the consumption.