For the food industry, 2017 was the year of the label. Whether ‘non-GMO’ or ‘no high fructose corn syrup’, ‘no added hormones’ or ‘gluten free,’ consumers are increasingly demanding more information about what’s in their food.
A report last fall by Nielsen found that 39 percent of consumers would switch from the brands they currently buy to others that provide clearer, more accurate product information. Additionally, 73 percent reported feeling positively about brands that share the “why behind the buy” information about their products.
For food manufacturers – including those in the dairy industry – the writing is on the wall, and it couldn’t be clearer. While many are responding with a barrage of new labels to meet that demand, they’re doing so with an eye towards giving their products a leg up over the competition, and their bottom lines a boost as well.
On its face, it makes sense. If consumers say they want transparency, tell them exactly what is in your product. That is simply supplying a certain demand.
But the marketing strategy in response to this consumer demand has gone beyond articulating what is in a product, to labeling what is NOT in the food. And this is where “simple” supply and demand is no longer simple. So-called “absence claims” labels – those that arbitrarily tell a consumer what isn’t in a product, rather than what is – represent an emerging labeling trend that is harmful both to the consumers who purchase the products and the industry that supplies them.
For example, Hunt’s put a “non-GMO” label on its canned crushed tomatoes a few years ago – despite the fact that at the time there was no such thing as a GMO tomato on the market. There still isn’t today, yet the label remains. Some dairy companies are using the “non-GMO” label on their milk, despite the fact that all milk is naturally GMO-free, regardless of the type of feed given to the cows that produce it. In addition, the “no added hormones” label has become de rigueur within the poultry industry, even though federal law already makes it illegal to sell poultry in the U.S. that was raised with added hormones.
While creating labels that play on consumer fears and misconceptions about their food may give a company a temporary marketing advantage over competitive products on the grocery aisle, thereby boosting the bottom line, long term this kind of ploy will have just the opposite effect: by injecting fear-mongering into the discourse about our food, we run the risk of eroding consumer trust in not just a single product, but the entire food business.
Eventually, it becomes a question in consumers’ minds: Should I have ever been eating these foods in the first place? By purchasing and consuming these types of products, have I already done some kind of harm to me? To my children? To the planet?
For food manufacturers, it will mean a double whammy with significant long-term consequences: irrevocably damaged consumer trust and lower sales for everyone.
And this isn’t just supposition. A recent study by a group of academics at the University of Delaware found that absence claims labels “can stigmatize food produced with conventional processes even when there is no scientific evidence that they cause harm, or even that it is compositionally different.”
It’s clear that food manufacturers must tread carefully when it comes to using absence claims solely as a marketing lever. In addition to the likely negative long-term impact on sales, this verbal sleight of hand sends a message that innovations in farming and food processing are unwelcome, eventually leading to less efficiency, fewer choices for consumers, and ultimately, more costly food products.
If we allow this kind of label fear mongering to continue, the losers are obvious: all of us – from the individual consumers to the very industry they count on to provide safe and healthy food for their families.
Credit: Source link
