I just listened to a presentation during a gala luncheon of the Manitoba Farm Writers and Broadcasters Association from the Manitoba Egg Producers. It was all about the pressures of consumer demands for increased animal welfare and brought out to me the point that the consumer’s always right, but the consumer doesn’t always know what he wants.
There are huge pressures on farmers of egg-laying chickens just like there are on all livestock producers. It’s the meaty version of the environmental pressures on crop growers that keep making farming harder. (Anyone who read what I blogged about yesterday will know that I think that increased safety and quality demands are likely to be a key advantage for Canadian farmers because we are actually able to often meet those demands, and others in other countries often cannot.)
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The Manitoba producers have been quite aggressive in addressing public concerns about small cages for chickens by pushing for “enriched cages” which have more room and embracing “free run” chicken facilities, which let the flightless flappers run around to their hearts’ content within barns. They’ve pushed farther and faster than most other egg producers across the country and have seemed more open to quick changes than other livestock industries.
They’ve done this because they think they need to head off public concerns before animal rightists manage to push governments into the kinds of regulations that have tied up European livestock producers and made their plight difficult. But while they’ve embraced the notion of good animal welfare and following the “five freedoms” of animal welfare, they haven’t gone all the way that consumer surveys might suggest they want them to. They aren’t planning to go to all-free-range, which is what many urban consumers would say they would like to see if you asked them.
That’s because consumers might say they like things like that, but in reality, their deepest concern is to feel good about the food they’re buying, and for that they need to feel the animals are being well treated. And they still care about cost and food safety, so if those things conflict with the most utopian views of free range chickening and egging, then they’ll be willing to accept reasonable middle grounds – like enriched cages or free run facilities, the egg producers think.
That’s been the path the McDonald’s fast food chain has gone and it has found that consumers are willing to accept a reasonable balance between animal liberation, food safety, cost and consistent availability of Egg McMuffins.
Still, it’s a tough situation for producers, who hear unrealistic and unreasonable demands from consumers, but know that in the end, in some way, the customer’s right, but they’ve got to find a way to make him right in a way that is possible. No easy answers to any of this, but consistently thinking about the ones at the opposite end of the chain who are buying farm products is the best way to muddle through these complexities, methinks.
