Britain, which first discovered mad cow disease in herds in 1986, has been blamed for exporting the disease, which sparked consumer panic in other European countries.

But the number of UK consumers concerned about the disorder and its deadly human equivalent variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) had fallen to 45 percent in 2002 from 55 percent in 2001 and 61 percent in 2000.

With only months to go before the end of Britain's three-year field-scale trials for gene-spliced crops, worry about GM foods also dropped slightly to 36 percent in 2002 from 38 percent in the previous year and 43 percent in 2000, the survey.

FSA chief Sir John Krebs said the survey was positive news for consumers.

"This annual survey, by continuing to highlight changing opinion about the issues that matter most to consumers, is a valuable contribution to the continuing public debate on food safety and standards," he said in a statement.

A rise was noted in the number of people concerned about hygiene at fast food outlets, with the figure rising to 23 percent in 2002 from 18 percent in 2001.

People still also believe that information on food labels is poor, with one in five shoppers saying that labels were 'fairly difficult to understand' and one in twenty finding them 'very difficult'.

The FSA survey results were based on samples from 3,000 consumers.