Heavy metals and microbes in organic and conventional fruits and consumer perception towards organic food

Consumption of vegetables and fruits is widely recognized as an essential component of any balanced diet, providing minerals, vitamins and other nutrients which can also minimize chronic disease, cancer and heart disease risk. However, public health usually linked with pathogens and heavy metals in fresh produce have been reported in a number of countries worldwide. People say that organic is more healthy and safer to be consume than the conventional as it potentially contain harmful pathogens and high level of heavy metals concentration. Therefore, this study aims to determine the heavy metal and microbes in organic and conventional fruits and the consumer perceptions toward organic food. There are three types of fruits used in this study which are berries type: Actinidia deliciosa (kiwifruit), stone fruit: Prunus domestica (plum fruit) and pome fruit: Malus pumila (apple) in order to determine the heavy metals and microbes in both organic and conventional fruits. The findings in this study provide the content of heavy metal concentration and microbes in both organic and conventional fruits at retail level in Malaysia. Ingestion of high concentration of heavy metals can have consequences on human health and different microbial groups in fresh produce can have different effects on human health. In consumer perceptions part, there are five factors included in this study which are product characteristic, price, labelling and packaging, promotion, and accessibility of organic food (place). The findings of the study indicated that the demographic profiles seemed to affect the consumer’s perception on organic food. This paper intensifies the perception of consumers in various factors (product, price, labelling and packaging, promotion and place) towards organic food.