CALGARY — Agricultural biotechnology companies should be winning over consumers’ hearts rather than influencing their minds, says a food industry adviser.
Charlie Arnot, chief executive officer of the Center for Food Integrity in Kansas City, Missouri, says seed technology and food companies have been misguided in their efforts to sway the general public to their side of the GM crop debate.
“We have operated under the assumption that the public will be logical and they will be rational and if we simply give them the right information they’ll come to our side of the argument,” he told delegates attending the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference 2013.
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“If they haven’t come to our side of the argument the logical conclusion is we’ve not yet given them the right information, so we’ll go get some more science.”
That education-first approach was promoted at earlier sessions at the conference.
David Morgan, North America regional director for Syngenta Seeds Inc., said GM labelling is being debated in dozens of U.S. states. It is becoming a major battleground between the pro- and anti-GM forces, with billions of dollars being spent on publicity campaigns.
“We have to rebuild consumer conference that this is a safe technology,” he said. “They must be convinced that it’s safe. The labelling debate is an intrinsic part of that in my mind.”
Dave Hansen, president of Canterra Seeds, said “education is paramount” in convincing consumers to embrace the technology.
“The challenge that we have is that it is always coming from a self-serving sort of perspective,” he said.
Arnot said building consumer confidence is far more important than proving competency when it comes to establishing trust.
“They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” he said. “It is more important for you to be a peer than it is for you to be peer-reviewed.”
Arnot provided an example of how to mismanage a situation.
A grocery store owner in Rhode Island recently posted a shelf tag informing customers that the store was no longer stocking Kellogg’s Kashi brand of cold cereal because it contained GM soy and was not living up to its “natural” billing. A consumer captured the shelf tag on a smart phone and posted it online.
“It went viral and created a firestorm of online backlash for Kashi,” said Arnot.
The response from Kashi’s general manager was that the company had done nothing wrong because there are no regulations for the term “natural.” While technically correct, this was not a technical issue. Consumers felt betrayed and they tend to act on what they feel versus what they know.
Biotech and food companies are often engaged in the wrong debate. Consumers want to know if society should be using biotechnology.
“Our historical response has been, ‘Well science says we can,’” said Arnot.
That isn’t answering the question consumers are posing.
“We can’t substitute scientific verification for ethical justification,” he said. “That’s where the debate exists and we’re not effective in that debate today.”
Arnot encouraged biotechnology companies to claim the moral high ground by assuring the public that they are doing the right thing for the right reasons and making money in the process.
“Simply educating the public is not going to be sufficient,” he said.
They need to help consumers understand how the technology benefits society and the environment, but more importantly they need to assure consumers that their commitment to doing what’s right has never been stronger.
