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Food Safety in Question...and Transparency Becomes a Star

We've been writing about various forms of transparency at The Hartman Group for quite some time. In the World of Health and Wellness, transparency is manifest through growing consumer interest in knowledge and authenticity. That is, as consumers become more and more involved in health and wellness lifestyles, they become increasingly interested in gathering more knowledge about healthy foods and other lifestyle choices, and bring increasing scrutiny to their product choices in a search for authenticity.

In the latter case, they want to know where a food product came from, who made it and (exactly!) what it is made of. At the core of the health and wellness world, where consumers interrogate their food, there is little tolerance for less than the real thing, the authentic. There is no room for compromised, adulterated, impure products. Knowing the source of those products eases those concerns. A local, organic farmer is likely to be found "authentic," a factory in New Jersey is not.

In the foodie world, authenticity and knowledge are a big deal, too. They drive consumers to seek out the right produce, the right cheeses, certain types of meats and so on. While the content may differ somewhat, it is the same metaphysic that is seen in the Health and Wellness World - one of knowledge about foods and "authentic" products that are readily subsumed under the masthead of transparency.

What we saw three years ago in the health and wellness and foodie circles has trickled out to the mainstream in somewhat diluted, but certainly recognizable, forms, without catalysts. Even prior to the influence of the most recent scares about melamine and pet food or E. coli contaminating spinach, mainstream consumers are now much more inquisitive about their products and where they come from. The desire for increasing transparency is no longer just found in highly lifestyle-involved consumers - it has become nearly everyone's concern.

And now, transparency has found an accelerant in the concern over tainted pet food and tainted animal feed, establishing fears that the same contaminants may have impacted human food supplies as well. Just as the Alar scare some years ago prompted interest in organics, this latest food safety scare is likely to prompt further ratcheting up of interest in "transparent" and "traceable" foods, as this won't be the last time that toxins "inadvertently" enter the food supply. Such catalysts also influence new behaviors: Whereas Alar influenced some consumers to seek out organics, the melamine pet food scare has driven up sales of frozen and refrigerated "fresh" style pet foods, as well as recipe books focused on how to make food for pets at home.

For the more developed lifestyle consumer, the current pet and human food scares reinforces their worst suspicions - that food products are often made in the same ways that other products are - using cost-cutting measures, such as cheaper and often lower quality raw materials. Sourcing cheaper materials may be fine for a company making machinery, but applying the same sourcing models to something that people eat is seen differently by consumers. The stakes are much higher, and consumers are increasingly put off by the "commodity" approach to food. The hubbub about high fructose corn syrup - the likely successor to trans fats as the chief "demon" ingredient - has already prompted much consumer concern about "cheap ingredients," "manufacturing shortcuts," and other signs of the industrial model of food production that represent the polar opposite of what consumers are demanding - foods that are made by people and companies that "care," in a profound sense, about the quality of what they are making. Smaller and "local"-feeling food companies have been effectively creating such impressions, and as a result have been gaining market share.

For more on food safety from a consumer perspective, see our HartBeat Video Minute below, with The Hartman Group's President and COO, Laurie Demeritt.

Can't see the video? Click here to download the newest Adobe Flash Player.

Take Away

Recent events centering on contamination of the food supply, especially in the case of melamine in pet food, underscore that for brands involved with mass production, there is indeed a high price to pay for low cost ingredients and commoditized production processes. In the UK, Marks & Spencer is experimenting with labeling its packages with "air freighted" stamps bowing toward consumer interests in foods that are produced locally versus imported. Here in America, Kellogg's has announced an initiative that moves nutritional information (which health-minded consumers look at, usually when they first purchase products) to the front of packaging.

While we don't advocate yet more symbols on packaging already overwhelmed by a sea of certifications, stamps and proprietary symbols, the road to transparency from the consumer perspective is gradually clarifying in terms of what they want, which is reliable information about the origins of products and the story behind the ingredients in the products. What does this mean for larger, traditional players in the food industry? It's simple: Now would be a very good time to become more transparent, give consumers more insight into how products are made and what they are made from, and promulgate reassurances of careful, quality sourcing supported by real facts.

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