Major boost for Irish food

Irish consumers believe Irish food is safer than imported food, according to a major survey carried out by the Irish Farmers' Journal and Bord Bia. The survey of 500 people countrywide undertaken by Noel Halloran Marketing showed that more than four out of five people were happy with the quality of Irish beef, poultry and vegetables.

For anyone selling milk products there is a shock only one third of people surveyed knew the fat content of full fat milk, most of those asked said that milk was at least 15 per cent fat.

New trends are evident among consumers with a marked difference in perceptions of which supermarket groups supported Irish food. Superquinn came out top with Tesco and Crazy Prices seen to be the least supportive of Irish food.

There is a marked trend towards organic food with almost one third of those surveyed willing to pay 25 per cent extra for organic food. Rural dwellers have more confidence in Irish food than townfolk. Over a quarter of rural shoppers did most of their shopping in local shops with almost three quarters using supermarkets.

In towns only one in ten shoppers used the local shop with the vast majority favouring supermarkets for their major food purchases. The good news for the supermarkets is that the big food spenders, those spending more than £75 a week on food, favour the supermarkets for their food purchases.

Food safety

Food safety has become a major issue over the past decade and this is reflected in the survey. Consumers are much more concerned with the quality and safety aspects of food than the price. Less than one in five consumers thought that price was the most important factor when buying food. Almost half or 45 per cent of the people surveyed said that food quality and safety was the most important factor when buying with 35 per cent favouring the nutritional properties of food

These results come as a major boost to Irish food producers and the food industry. Perceived food scares are a very regular occurrence in the past decade and the treatment of beef by some media has been very negative. To have an 81 per cent majority happy with the quality of Irish beef means that consumers are very confident of the product.

The same level of satisfaction is evident for vegetables with 85 per cent of consumers showing satisfaction for poultry. The trend is consistent in both rural and urban areas.

So what does all this mean?

If a big majority of Irish consumers are happy with the quality of Irish food and less than one fifth of them regard price as the major consideration, then it is reasonable to say they feel they are getting good value for money. A large number of people also indicated a preference for food of Irish origin so they have confidence in our food and the methods used to produce it.

Meanwhile unregulated imports of foreign food are being processed in this country and are sometimes labelled as Irish. This is a very questionable practice which will hopefully be sorted out by the new EU food labelling rules that are imminent.

While not wishing to deny anyone access to foreign food, it should be subject to the same standards of production and processing that the consumer is ensured of with home produced food. If processors or retailers try to deceive the consumer then serious questions must be asked about why they do so.

From the dairy industry's point of view the results are shocking. Only 35 per cent of people know the fat content of milk and not only that, the other 65 per cent thought that milk had a fat content of four to five times higher than it does have.

This means that milk is suffering from a major lack of awareness about the fat levels it contains. The question must be asked as to how this has happened. Does the dairy industry really care that this is the case?. Do our multinational dairy giants know that they are selling product with one hand tied behind their backs? Do they really care because if the Irish Farmers Journal and Bord Bia are the first people to find this out then it doesn't say much for all the marketing gurus that the Irish dairy farmers have been paying for over the last quarter of a century.

At the moment the National Dairy Council is running a six figure sum ad campaign to combat this ignorance of milk. I wonder what could be done if the NDC was adequately supported to the same level as the soft drinks industry?.

NDC chief executive Aidan McCarthy said that this is an area of concern that has already been identified, he hoped that by the end of the year there will be an identifiable shift in the awareness of the real value of milk.

Organic food

The increasing awareness in organic food is very interesting. Almost half the people in rural areas (44 per cent) consciously buy organic food compared with 36 per cent of urban dwellers. So are they prepared to pay up to 25 per cent extra for organic food?

A quarter of all those surveyed said they were prepared to pay this premium.

This result has also occurred in a number of other surveys on food carried out by Bord Bia in continental Europe but the sale of organic produce is consistently below these levels. It does mean that there is increasing awareness of organic food and production methods (see Angela Nugent's report page 30 section one) and the high satisfaction with Irish food indicated earlier implies that consumers see it as a natural product.

Bord Bia welcomed the very high levels of satisfaction that Irish consumers have for Irish beef at 81 per cent. Michael Duffy, Chief Executive of Bord Bia said that the high number of people choosing to buy Irish product is a reflection of the confidence that consumers have in the quality of Irish food in general. He said retail sales of beef increased by 7 per cent in 1998 over 1997, and are now at a higher level than pre March 1996.