Consumer Views on Food, Safety and Sustainability

1
Consumer Views on Food, Safety and Sustainability

• Presentation by
• Edward Groth III, PhD
• at the CropLife International
• Annual Conference
• 3 June 2004
• Brussels

2
Consumers

• Everyone is a consumer
• Many different kinds of consumers
• Individuals (ultimate customers)
• Organized consumer NGOs

3
Food Attributes that Matter to (Some/Most/All)
Consumers

• Sensory qualitytaste, appeal
• Nutritional quality
• Price/value for the money
• Safety
• Sustainable production
• Where grown/produced

4
Green Consumers

• General consumer attitudes about buying green
  (environmentally better) products
• 11 percent committed greens
• 5 percent greenback greens
• 33 percent opportunistic greens
• 18 percent disinterested or grousers
• 33 percent browns

5
Green Food Consumers

• Buyers of organically grown foods (steady growth
  area, 20/yr in US)
• A potential market for other sustainably-
  produced crops (eco-labels, etc.)
• 23 percent committed to buying earth-sustainable
  foods
• 22 percent less committed for ecological reasons
  but willing to buy for nutritional and other
  qualities (taste, convenience).

6
Hypothesis

• In a rational world, there should be strong
  consumer support and potentially large markets
  for crops (and foods made from crops) designed to
  help meet world food needs and make agriculture
  more sustainable.

7
Tentative Conclusion

• Based on available data, the hypothesized
  consumer support is not (yet) apparent.
• I.e., most agricultural (crop) innovations seem
  to be greeted with skepticism and/or opposition
  by many consumers.
• Why should this be?

8
Hazard vs. Outrage

• In this terminology (coined by Peter Sandman in
  the 1980s)
• Hazard describes the biological component of a
  food or environmental risk (magnitude and
  probability of harm occurring), and
• Outrage describes the subjective attributes of a
  risk that determine how worried or angry it tends
  to make people

9
Perceptions of Hazards

• Many expert authorities have observed that
  objective and consumer rankings of the relative
  importance of food hazards seem to be very
  different. Consumers (at least according to
  these analysis) have inverted priorities.

10
Relative importance of food hazards Expert vs.
consumer rankings

• Objective Ranking Consumer Ranking
• Excess calories Pesticides/drugs
• Microbial pathogens Food additives
• Natural toxicants Contaminants
• Contam. pesticides Pathogens
• Vet. drug residues Natural toxicants
• Food additives Excess calories

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Consumer Concerns
12
Consumer awareness of relative risk
13
Outrage Factors and Foods

• More outrage Less outrage
• Technological vs. Natural
• Hard to control vs. Controllable
• Novel/unfamiliar vs. Familiar
• Involuntary vs. Voluntary
• Unfair vs. Equitable
• Undemocratic vs. Democratic

14
Ethical Issues and Foods

• Food is personal
• Consumers have a right to know
• Consumers have a right to choose
• Distribution (not just magnitude) of risks and
  benefits matters
• Process matters

15
Process Issues

• Consumers need to be listened to
• They need to know their concerns are taken
  seriously and dealt with
• Many would like a more open discussion of ethical
  issues and value trade-offs
• Consumers (as consumer NGOs) want a seat at the
  table (i.e., an influence in corporate/government
  policy decisions)

16
Signs of Bad Process

• Talking down to the consumer (Trust us, we
  know its safe.)
• Overstressing science, dismissing value and
  ethical concerns
• Decisions made behind closed doors or with
  non-transparent processes
• Communication after the fact, promoting
  acceptance for decisions already made

17
Ooops

• Some examples of recent mis-steps
• Secret GM field trials revealed in Germany
• Non-scientific concerns still marginalized
• Offering (unwanted) GM maize as emergency food
  aid for Southern Africa
• Opposition to precautionary approaches by some
  government and some sectors of industry
• Continued resistance (in U.S.) to labeling GM
  foods, and loopholes in EU label legislation

18
Trust A Central Issue

• A result of bad process has been general loss of
  trust in the food and agriculture industries on
  the part of many consumers
• Lack of trust greatly magnifies outrage
• Problem exists all around the world (in Europe,
  the Americas, Africa, Asia, etc.)
• Trust must be earned, and once lost, is very hard
  to regain

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Recipe for Success

• Build effective two-way communications
• Listen to and respect your critics
• Always tell the truth! (Admit uncertainty about
  risks dont exaggerate benefits)
• Insist on openness and transparency
• Discuss value ethical issues explicitly
• Build a broad consensus via inclusive process

20
You need to

• BE engaged with other sectors of society in
  dialogues leading to better consensus on all
  these dimensions of food issues
• -- and --
• You need to be perceived as engaged on all these
  dimensions.
• The latter may actually be harder than the former
  to achieve, but both are vital.