NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. – As consumer researcher Ted Schroeder sees it, the Canadian cattle and beef industry has a huge challenge regaining a hoof-hold in the Japanese market.
The agricultural economics professor at Kansas State University told a Canadian Cattlemen’s Association meeting Aug. 16 that a four-nation survey of 4,000 consumers about the safety of Canadian beef showed that just 31 percent of Japanese who were questioned thought it is safe.
Japanese attitudes toward beef safety generally were low but the Canadian product scored particularly poorly. It is one of the markets Canadian exporters target for future growth.
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“In Japan, beef has a very high level of skepticism,” Schroeder said. “This tells me Japanese consumers have a perception of our beef products that we have to change. We’ve got an uphill battle to fight.”
Yet he rejects the suggestion that creating packing plants with universal BSE testing of products destined for the Japanese market would be an effective way to reassure Japanese consumers and to give Canadian product an advantage over its American competition.
In an interview, Schroeder supported the mainstream Canadian beef industry and government view that any move to universal testing for BSE is a bad idea. He said consumers who call for universal testing, including the Consumers Association of Canada, don’t understand what they are requesting.
Consumers want assurances of food safety and the best way to do that is to put in place “a stream of management practices and industry management plans that ensure the product doesn’t have what they may be concerned about.”
Despite consumer demands, testing is just one tool and not the best one, Schroeder said.
“You can test for everything and at the end of the day have a product that is no more safe than had you not tested it for anything, but you would have a product nobody could afford,” he said. “The issue is to create systems that keep risk materials out of the system and that makes testing irrelevant.”
Canada’s efforts to change Japanese thinking should be centred on proving how the safeguards work to keep infective material out of the beef supply, said the Kansas academic who was involved in a massive study on the future of the North American cattle industry.
“You’re not going to change their attitude, but you can change their perception about beef safety by helping them understand what it is about the product you are offering that is safe,” he said. “If you have to test a product, you are admitting you don’t have a system in place that assures safety.”
Schroeder told CCA delegates that the image of beef as a safe food supply generally is strong.
Beef consumption per capita has grown 13 percent in the world during the past decade and in the consumer survey, Canadian beef received the highest safety ratings from Canadian consumers of any of the four countries asked about the domestic supply.
But while beef consumption is growing, consumption of competing pork and poultry are increasing at an even faster rate and beef’s share of the animal protein market is falling.
“They must be doing something better than we are,” Schroeder said.
