A scientist with the University of Saskatchewan suggests one way for food industry stakeholders to build trust is to demonstrate they can act in the interest of consumers.
Trace R&D 2009, hosted by the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals is slated for June 2nd and 3rd in Winnipeg.
Dr. Jill Hobbs, the head of the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Bioresource Policy, Business and Economics, will examine “Traceability and Quality Assurance: Who Do Consumers Trust?”
She says surveys have shown, while some Canadian consumers have confidence in government food safety systems, others have faith in third party certifiers.
We found that there was a sizable group of the people that we surveyed that definitely trusted government.
That doesn’t mean the government has to do everything.
If there was a government backed quality standard, we found that a lot of Canadians would trust that.
Again, in some cases other people would tend to trust third parties.
When we looked at what explains trust, it was the extent to which the organizations were seen as knowledgeable, the extent to which they were seen to be transparent and accountable and then lastly the extent to which they were seen to act in consumers’ best interests.
That really sort of varies across whether people trust government more or they trust food companies or they trust third parties and so on.
But basically we looked at are they knowledgeable, are they seen to be transparent and accountable, are they seen to represent consumers’ best interest.
From the perspective of the industry, a food company, how can food companies gain consumer trust?
It was really sort of working on showing that they can act in consumers’ best interest for example was one way in which food companies could create more trust among consumers.
Dr. Hobbs notes surveys have shown, while some consumers are satisfied with the labels they find in their grocery stores, others are looking for more information on how the food was produced on the farm.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
