Milk is Milk Blog by Alex Avery

Well, for the past two days the Center for Global Food Issues team has been here at the World Wide Food Expo promoting the Milk is Milk campaign and our Earth Friendly, Farm Friendly eco-label project. The responses have been overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic.

We were visited by several university dairy science teams, who are here to compete in an intercollegiate dairy products evaluation contest, including the Michigan State and South Dakota State teams. The team members eagerly gathered up our informational materials, CDs, and “Milk is Milk” informational cartons. Everyone always loves the milk cartons. (Contact us if you’d like copies!)

The dairy science teams particularly liked our new informational guide to milk labeling claims that explain in clear and simple terms what all of the stuff on milk labels really means-everything from different pasteurization methods to production claims such as organic. All of the university science teams who visited us were supportive of our efforts to educate the public and to rein in predatory marketing.

In fact, the coach of the South Dakota State dairy science team, Dr. Bob Baer, was one of the first to research the question of whether Milk is Milk. Dr. Baer’s research from the late 1980s was the first to demonstrate that milk from cows supplemented with rbST is, in fact, the same as milk from unsupplemented cows. He reminded us that he shared his unvarnished opinion that Milk is Milk with the Journal of the National Institutes of Health way back in 1988 and is surprised that this controversy continues to boil and that so many consumers remain in the dark that Milk is Milk.

Several other university professors also stopped by with encouragement. More than one said things like, “we’re with you all the way” and “finally, somebody is speaking out with the truth on this.” One professor said she intended to place a “Milk is Milk” carton prominently in her office and keep it there to show to skeptical undergraduate students. Another professor, after snatching up our informational CD, said that he was happy there was finally an accurate Web site to which he could refer worried consumers. Righto, professor, we’re happy for the referrals.

All of the visitors to our booth at the Expo were interested to learn of a recent report that a 12-year Swiss university study demonstrated that organic milk is not any better than conventional milk. To the contrary, according to the Swiss researchers, organically produced milk contains more disease-causing bacteria.

On the consumer side of things, several retail food outlets stopped by to gather materials. One highly successful coffee house chain (whose celestially-themed name we’ll refrain from mentioning) stopped by and took informational packets. When we reminded them of the high-profile brouhaha that resulted in their stores stocking and eventually throwing away hundreds of gallons of organic milk for lack of consumer demand, they responded with a wink and a “we can neither confirm nor deny.” Regular readers of the Milk is Milk blog all know that story well by now.

Finally, we were once again warmly greeted by many dairy producers and packagers who couldn’t get enough “StopLabelingLies.com” and “Growing More Food Per Acre Leaves More Land for Nature” bumper stickers. They cleaned us out of “StopLabelingLies” bumper stickers on Day Two!

Thanks to all for your encouraging words and helping to spread the truth that Milk is Milk.

Don’t be fooled by misleading special interest marketing surveys(part 1 of 2)

Milk is Milk Blog by Alex Avery

Beware of “consumer research” that claims to know what consumers demand when it comes to production standards for animal agriculture. A dairy industry colleague of mine recently spoke at a conference with one of the head honchos responsible for milk and meat purchasing for Wal-Mart. Now, love ‘em or hate ‘em, but based on sales Wal-Mart knows what drives consumer purchase decisions. The Wal-Mart representative railed against “consumer surveys” recently touted by niche marketing interests and others which claim consumers want X, Y or Z associated with food products like milk and meat.

Apparently Wal-Mart (like most academic experts on consumer research) knows that you can design a survey to get people to say whatever you want. When you prompt someone with “what if’s” and “if you knew’s” people will say things that simply don’t reflect their actual opinions and rarely translate to actual product purchase behavior.

What did Wal-Mart recommend?

Watch your existing customers in the store and ask your employees (un-prompted) what they are actually seeing and hearing over time. If it doesn’t jive with promoted consumer research, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to know which to believe: real customers and employees, or the marketing interest trying to sell you something. The Wal-Mart representative was reacting to a question regarding a special interest group claim that consumers were demanding “humane farmed” animal food products — a tactic by the animal rights movement to raise production costs and thereby reduce consumer consumption due to a combination of higher prices and the general denigration of animal agriculture: if one milk is produced humanely, then logically its competitors must be un-humane — a ridiculous, disparaging and false claim.

A similar situation arose a few years ago when an activist group called the Organic Consumers Association announced boycotts of Starbuck’s stores claiming consumers were demanding the coffee cafe giant go 100% organic, replacing their coffee with all organic, shade-grown, beans and all their milk and dairy products with “rbST-free” organic milk. Readers of this blog know the full story. For newbies, the short version is this: Starbucks responded by offering organic dairy choices to their customers and ended up throwing away more milk than they sold. Today, after spending who-knows-how-much time reacting to fake consumer demand, they no longer offer the organic milk alternatives in most stores. Today, Organic Consumers Association (between campaigns to ban biotechnology in California and leading consumer boycotts of Trader Joe’s) is urging dairies to convert to organic methods while loudly proclaiming consumer demand for organic milk is outstripping availability. Others in the dairy industry often cannot afford, like Starbucks, to make major production changes and then switch back after learning the promised customer demand wasn’t really there.

Next time you hear about “consumer demand” or “consumer research” about milk, ask a few questions and look at existing academically published research on this matter before making expensive changes. There are three types of research bandied about these days in the dairy industry. I saw a recent presentation which described this as research designed to:

research on this matter before making expensive changes. There are three types of research bandied about these days in the dairy industry. I saw a recent presentation which described this as research designed to:

1. Determine actual consumer attitudes and behaviors. These are unaided consumer research (surveys) and/or actual purchasing (IRI) data analysis.
2. Predict potential consumer attitudes and behaviors. These are aided or prompted surveys.
3. Create consumer attitudes and behaviors. Called “push polls,” these are designed to create an opinion and/or cause an action.

Now, we really shouldn’t have to spend much time discussing the “push poll” tactic. This is usually the purview of politicians and activist groups with end-justifies-the-means mentalities. The political version of these polls asks such questions “if you knew so-and-so beat his children… would you vote for him?” Activists, like the Organic Consumers Association, run phone banks asking consumers if they want milk made with toxic chemicals and cancer-causing hormones or pure organic milk. They then take their “research” to companies like Starbucks or Trader Joe’s to bolster their demands.

The second type of polling is trickier. In some cases it’s a legitimate way to evaluate potential markets and new directions. Other times it is used to manipulate economic and political decision-making. Simply put, it is not a tool to gauge actual consumer attitudes or behaviors. Professor John Krosknick of the University of Maryland Joint Program in Survey Methodology recently presented on the challenges of this type of exploratory research. He noted, “Don’t assume that questionnaire answers are people’s attitudes, beliefs, intentions, personalities, etc…”

We have recently seen many self-interested parties providing research of this type in the dairy industry to proclaim radical shifts in consumer attitudes and purchasing behaviors. Organizations like The Hartman Research Group are out convincing people that there is a “huge untapped demand for green-labeled food, including of course organic food.” Hartman suggests that once this latent demand is unleashed, consumers will rapidly grow the markets for all shades of green-labeled food products, from humanely-raised livestock, to Salmon Safe, IPM-Grown, Bird-Friendly, and finally, the Gold Standard - certified organic food products.” However, a review of just some of Hartman’s research clearly shows that they ask loaded questions and draw their data from highly selective groups who would be predisposed to come to such conclusions. We have recently seen many self-interested parties providing research of this type in the dairy industry to proclaim radical shifts in consumer attitudes and purchasing behaviors. Organizations like The Hartman Research Group are out convincing people that there is a “Hartman suggests that once this latent demand is unleashed, consumers will rapidly grow the markets for all shades of green-labeled food products, from humanely-raised livestock, to Salmon Safe, IPM-Grown, Bird-Friendly, and finally, the Gold Standard - certified organi So what do milk consumers care about? That gets us to the first type of research: un-aided, un-prompted surveys combined with actual purchase data (such as IRI research). All of the available research on this subject (and there is a great deal) says, when consumers aren’t self-selected (meaning they didn’t phone up the local organic commune) and aren’t prompted (no leading questions about whether they care about dangerous toxins in their milk) the only things they mention about what drives their milk buying decisions are:

• Price
• Freshness
• Type of milk (whole fat v. skim)
• Specific brand loyalty

Economically speaking, research shows that price is relatively “inelastic” for milk consumers. Simply put, if prices go up consumers don’t buy as much milk. Think then of the effect of having unaffordable organic milk that proclaims to be “free of toxins” (falsely suggesting it is different, safer or of higher quality) next to conventional milk you can afford. The real effect of this type of marketing is to turn consumers away from milk completely. Rather than sort out the competing claims and higher prices, most consumers will simply purchase an alternative beverage. Freshness is another leading factor that 74-94 percent of consumers report influencing their purchase decision. Yet, we know this to be misleading as most organic brands are ultra-pasteurized for extended shelf life - thus comparisons of expiration dates can lead consumers to mistakenly choose older organic milk over the truly fresher conventional brands. Again, some are paying more and thus possibly buying less, while others are moving to alternative products.

In part two on this topic I’ll review the impact on dairy consumption of these marketing issues. We welcome anyone who has research into public attitudes about consumers and milk to share that with us and we’ll shortly post an index of all the research we’ve found and that submitted. Meanwhile, for producers, retailers and consumers our simple message remains: Milk is milk. or producer, retailers �

The impact of misleading consumer research (part 2 of 2) Earlier this week I wrote beware of “consumer research” which claims to know what consumers demand when it comes to production standards for animal agriculture. The news media and dairy industry executives are taking such research at face value without evaluating potential biases or impacts on dairy consumers and producers.

One group frequently cited by the media and others driving production demands (mainly those restricting producer choices which can harm them economically) is The Hartman Group. A review of this organization’s clients and affiliations is rarely published along side of their consumer survey claims. The Hartman Group counsels organic dairy behemoths like Horizon Organic and natural product giants like Whole Foods Markets and others. The Hartman Group simultaneously works for activist groups promoting organic-only agendas and campaigns to end animal agriculture such as Co-op America, The Food Alliance, Corporation for the Northern Rockies and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). In fact, Hartman got its start working for an NRDC project called Mothers & Others led by Meryl Streep which helped destroy the apple industry with a later-discredited scare over Alar.

Today The Hartman Group continues to work with advocacy and niche marketing groups on how to “add value through environmental marketing.” Anti-conventional agriculture activists, such as the Institute for Agriculture Trade Policy, openly admit to using Hartman’s research to lobby grocery stores and other companies to force animal health and productivity product restrictions or bans upstream to producers. While promoting “consumer research” calling on retailers and others to shift their type of dairy and food offerings, Hartman’s president Laurie Demerrit also served on the board of directors of the Food Alliance - a group which openly opposes animal health, productivity, crop protection and other modern agriculture technologies while seeking to “create markets” for the organic products that they certify.

The personal views of The Hartman Group founder and CEO put the scientific validity of their research in perspective. In April 2005 The New York Times reported that Peter Hartman wrote in opposition to the new food pyramid guidelines that:

“Perhaps it’s time to give our science a much-needed breather and meditate on what it really means to live and eat together, as humans - in sync not with the regression outputs of biostatisticians but with rhythms and rituals of social life.”

Now the World Association for Public Opinion Research Code of Professional Ethics and Practices lists essential facts that should be included in all reports on surveys and therefore known about a survey that is used in a news story. Essential facts include asking who are the sponsors of research and if they have any bias or conflicts-of-interest in the results. Probably good disclosures for all uses of this type of research, especially those used to convince farmers to make costly changes that present real economic risks. That said, folks like Hartman say, “just look at the facts, the organic dairy market is booming!” So their claims of consumer demand must be true. Measured in one context they appear to be right. A recent report published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics clearly shows that from 1997 to 2002 organic labeled milk market grew by 566 percent.

However, taken in context the numbers are far less dramatic. This geometric growth was from less than 0.2 percent of all milk sales to 0.8 percent (not even a full one percent) of the total market. Moving from .12 percent to .80 percent isn’t all that impressive. Increasing from barely nothing to barely something is not a radical consumer trend.

But if you’re not going full-scale organic, many activists and niche marketing interests are urging dairies to take intermediate steps based on proclaimed consumer demand. They are urging dairy producers to abandon products like supplemental somatotropin (rbST) or antibiotics so they can market their products as “free from” these practices, and some coops appear to be falling for this. Yet, the same research which touts the impressive organic growth also showed that during the same period the share of “rbST-free”-labeled milk dropped by 26%. Of course, it, too, represented less than 1/2 of one-percent of the total market for milk.

Why the drop? The researchers state: “In contrast (to organic), rbST-free milk has a declining market share, suggesting two possible scenarios. It may be that as consumers learn more about rbST over time their perceptions of the risks associated with the technology go down reducing their desire to buy rbST-free milk…” However, the researchers suggest another more likely possibility. “The rbST-free labeled milk only serves as a ’starter’ or ‘gateway’ milk for those who would like to buy organic but cannot afford it and move up the ‘quality ladder’ from unlabeled to rbST-free to organic in an incremental process.”

This strongly suggests rbST-free labels only help drive customers to organic or away from milk completely. It is not about genuine consumer demand to not use rbST, but more about creating a market for higher priced products by scaring consumers about conventional, non-organic milk. Farmers being led to believe that they should abandon tools like rbST, antibiotics or traditional crop protection methods beware. It’s a slippery slope to marketing your product out of demand while shrinking the total dairy market.

The real effect of niche marketing (such as organic or individual false and misleading absence claims like “antibiotic-, hormone-, or pesticide-free”), which research shows mislead consumers, is to drive some milk consumers away from milk completely and purchase alternative beverages. Comparisons of misleading marketing claims and other labeling concerns (such as misleading expiration dates) suggest that they can lead to some consumers paying more for the same milk (and, thus, possibly buying less), while others move to alternative products.

Interestingly enough, the data for milk consumption almost mirror this assertion. In fact, from 1990 to 2003 we’ve seen a 14 percent decline in per capita milk consumption. As the organic market grows from less than 1/2 of one percent to one percent or more, we’ve seen a corresponding 14 percent overall market decline. The moral of the story is that dairy farmers moving to organic or other niche production schemes may be cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Paying more because you believe a product to be different is bad for you and bad for dairy farmers. Milk is milk.