Nancy Donley, who serves as a volunteer spokeswoman for STOP Foodborne Illness organization – she suffered the unthinkable horror of losing her child to E. coli contaminated beef in 1993 – recently penned an eye-opening op-ed for the Food Safety News.
In it, she writes:
“I am very concerned that mis-categorization campaigns such as this "pink slime" campaign will cause well-intentioned companies such as BPI to cease innovations for developing better food safety technologies and strategies. […] If this does in fact happen, and promising technologies get thwarted, we, the American public, will be the losers.”
This is another reminder that sometimes science isn’t enough. Consumers are influenced greatly by the traditional and social media. Those involved in the food and agriculture industries must make an effort to connect with the public on a variety of levels to help them better understand where their food comes from.
Furthermore, I get to turn on the Iowa news every night and learn how hundred of people in a town 20 miles from me, as well as in Kansas and Texas are being layer off by Beef Products Inc. because of a lack of demand for Lean Finely Textured Beef. Good job media. I am glad the consumer is scared.
Thanks for the info. The FAQ page on beefisbeef.com is a good explanation of stuff as well, I posted it on my facebook page to inform "non-ag" people in a gentle way.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post. I'm going back and watching the video now.
ReplyDeleteI hope the video helped answer some of your questions!
DeleteHey Crystal. First of all, good luck on your wedding this weekend. Otherwise, I like to hear your thoughts on a different point of view from a fellow cattle producer.
ReplyDeleteWe are lucky enough to process our own meat, so I will most likely not run across "finely textured" beef products in my house. However, even though I am a big proponent for the beef industry, do you ever think that the industry pushes their processing a little too far with products such as these? To be frank, the images of finely textured beef that I have seen do not pass my own "yuck" factor and I would not prefer to eat these products...and I'm a beef producer. How then can we expect the less agriculturally educated consumer to want to eat these items?
I respect the highly efficient use of our meat resources, however, understand consumers concerns and would prefer to see less processing of my product (such as finely textured beef products) so that my friends and family outside of agriculture continue to respect and demand my beef.
It seems to me that when the beef industry receives an attack such as this, our immediate response is to fight back, defend ourselves and talk about the lack of education that the general public has. But, when do we simply listen to consumers and say "You're right", this isn't very appetizing? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Caleb Schultz
Caleb, thanks for your comments. I think the awesome thing about the beed industry is that we have choices. The problem with this situation is that we are hearing from one group of people. What about the people that just want to run to the grocery store, pick up lean hamburger that night for supper, and don't really think or care about where that beef comes from, it just has to taste good. We have punished those people.
DeleteThe price of beef has the potential to dramatically increase. Without the use of Lean Finely Textured Beef we will need 1.5 million additional head of cattle. Both you and I know that we don't have those numbers, and I don't know if cattle numbers will ever rise to what they once were.
Finely, do you think that some of these same consumers would come to the same conclusion if they would have gone directly to the farmer, or BPI and asked their questions, instead of listening to sensationalize media reporting?
Thanks for helping keep the conservation going. We are very excited to start to sell some hamburger of our own, and might use you as a resource if we have any questions. This is a great video to check out if you haven't yet - http://crystalcattle.blogspot.com/2012/03/do-you-have-questions-about-meat-and.html