“In China, very tough new food safety laws were enacted last year, reflecting huge increase in the number of Chinese people concerned with food safety. Research cited by Rowarth indicated that in 2008 12% of Chinese people thought food safety was very important. In 2015, the proportion of those in China with a view that food safety is a moderately, or very big problem was 32%.
Rowarth expressed concern that New Zealand is not making the most of this change in consumer priorities in one of our most important export markets.
“New Zealand has huge integrity in this area. The minute the 1080 scandal broke, a whole lot of new testing procedures were put in place. Guards were put outside every dairy processing plant. All milk products in the supermarkets had red lines around them and somebody was initially standing there watching for some kind of contamination. This was hugely reassuring”.
She said, “The police estimated the 1080 scare has cost the New Zealand $3m, but actually it is just them. The extra testing that has gone into making our products safe has not been estimated but my calculation for the two people standing outside every plant 24 hours a day, and they are still there, is $15m in just one year”.
Rowarth says this is money that doesn’t go to the NZ farmer, and we are not capitalising on that safety value in our markets.
“When the botulism case emerged in China, the Chinese Government were all ‘buy local, buy local’. When it was shown not to be a problem, mothers were contacting each other through social media saying thank goodness it’s safe, and we knew it would be. But the Government networks went silent”.
While NZ has plenty of work to do on building product integrity values into its communication, it must also face the fact that more money needs to be directed at marketing. “Our marketing arms are not capturing consumers imagination”, said Rowarth.
In a comparison of countries’ investment in sheep and beef product marketing, New Zealand was shown to be well out of step with its rivals. “Beef & Lamb NZ has calculated that for every tonne of meat produced, Wales spent NZ$57 per tonne on marketing, compared with NZ’s lowly $11. Australia spends twice as much on marketing as New Zealand”, she said.
