SAINT JOHN, N.B. – Delegates to the Dairy Farmers of Canada convention last week received a mixed message about how the world sees them.
Consumers like, admire and respect dairy farmers, according to a survey described at the meeting.
Yet a senior official of the organization warned that the industry and its marketing system remain adrift in a dangerous sea filled with hostile economists and biased media.
“Over the next year, you can expect the usual attempts to discredit Canada’s support for supply management,” said DFC policy director Rick Phillips.
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“These efforts will be aided and abetted by Canada’s national press…. I continue to be concerned by the fact that our national press continues to abuse their powerful position by allowing their ideological bias against supply management to get in the way of the facts.”
As if to bolster Phillips’ point, a reporter for a Toronto-based business newspaper told the convention he personally prefers “free markets” to regulated systems such as supply management.
“There doesn’t seem to be any transparency in the way the system works,” said Peter Morton, a Washington-based reporter for The Financial Post. “It’s almost like cronyism, getting together once a year to set the prices.”
Morton, one of three reporters flown to the conference to discuss how news is reported, said he has the same distrust of the secrecy of the Canadian Wheat Board.
While delegates were lining up to complain about news coverage, Archie MacDonald was preparing to tell them the negative coverage has not hurt their public image.
The director of economics and market research for the dairy farmer lobby said a survey of 1,600 Canadians showed a high level of public sympathy for dairy farmers, despite bad press, criticism by economists and complaints about high prices from the consumer lobby.
Positive image
Most surveyed thought dairy farmers are honest, hard working and competitive, he said.
Few thought consumers are being “ripped off” by the dairy system. Most thought supply management works for consumers as well as farmers.
“It’s obvious Canadians respect and admire dairy farmers,” said MacDonald.
The dairy farmers’ lobby has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years buying advertisements to promote the image and causes of the industry.
Still, Phillips offered bitter criticism of newspapers which he said distort stories and coverage because they are hostile.
Several delegates complained about media coverage of the recent Canadian victory in a trade panel decision over whether tariffs which protect supply-managed sectors are legal under trade law.
Sharon Weitzel from Ontario said several Toronto newspapers used erroneous information to condemn the Canadian victory as bad for consumers, yet they have refused to run letters correcting the error.
Morton told them the business press likely will never support supply management.
But he urged the industry to be more open and to “tell your story” in an effort to win better coverage.
