While in the store last week, perusing the cheese case, I watched my fellow shoppers make their yogurt selections from the adjacent cooler. One young lady in particular was really taking her time analyzing her options, reminding me of the importance of what is placed on processing labels and the impact it has on the consumer's decision-making process.
Unsurprisingly, most consumers share the yogurt purchaser's habits, according to a Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) paper released in October 2015. It made five primary observations about consumers in relation to processing labels on their food.
- Consumers want to have a sense of control over the foods their families eat.
- Consumers know less about the quality of the products than producers do, creating an information divide.
- Consumers have benefited from technology in agriculture, but they don't understand it well.
- Consumers use process labels as cues to infer quality traits that are important to them
- Consumers often adjust their behavior based on labels, particularly those that imply a negative attribute.
The CAST paper moves on to express concern with how the average American interprets some of the labels currently used on packages. For example, a consumer never observes the quality claim suggested by a label that reads "all natural," so the consumer must deduce what that claim means. The group's primary recommendation suggests all labeling language and any additional labeling explanation should rely heavily on strong science.
They advise mandatory labeling be reserved for situations in which the product has been scientifically proven to harm human health and suggest voluntary labeling be true and scientifically verifiable. Additionally, CAST specialists say process labels that claim a product "contains" or is "free of" should also describe the current scientific consensus on the importance of the trait.
(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2016
January 18, 2016
