Transparency In The Supply Chain — The Key To Gaining Consumers' Trust
By Laurel Maloy, contributing writer, Food Online
Approximately 60 percent of Americans have little knowledge about food production and only about 17 percent of consumers have faith in companies involved in getting our food from field to fork
In a white paper from Sullivan Higdon and Sink titled Building Trust in What We Eat, the issue of consumer trust in the food supply chain is explored by means of a survey. The white paper suggests that consumers’ mistrust stems from having little knowledge of how their food is produced. It also suggests that along with a lack of transparency in getting food from the farm or factory to the table, companies place a high priority on profits rather than value. How a consumer perceives a company or a particular product is that consumer’s truth, regardless of what actually happens during the production and transport of food.
Right now, government entities, such as the FDA and USDA, have a higher level of trust with the American people, therefore coloring consumer perceptions. Newsworthy items being widely disseminated by these agencies seem to be how poor of a job farmers, processors, and transporters do at getting untainted food from the farm to our tables. The family sitting around the dinner table is inundated with horror stories about death and illness caused by e-coli, listeria, and botulism. In the meantime, food industry executives are seen reacting to negative press rather than being transparent in their dealings with the American consumer. It is clear that the food industry is not being proactive in their approach to gaining consumer trust. The food industry can help fix this problem through consumer education about the food production process.
Transparency, according to research conducted by The Center for Food Integrity (CFI), is one of the most critical, if not the single most important, factor in establishing a connection with the consumer. CFI’s study, Roadmap for “Trust-Building Transparency” was funded by the Foundation for Food Integrity (FFI), a non-profit foundation created to conduct research and provide educational outreach about today’s food system. The model for building consumer trusts lists seven elements: Motivations, Disclosure, Stakeholder Participation, Relevance, Clarity, Credibility, and Accuracy. All of these components contribute to how a consumer will feel about a particular company. The research measures 33 different trust-building attributes, incorporating these into the top seven, and further utilizes interviews with real consumers in order to define the concept of consumer trust.
The simple truth is people don’t trust what they don’t know. To turn that around, people need knowledge. The more knowledge consumers have, the more confident they are in their decision to trust the information given to them. The Roadmap for “Trust-Building Transparency” report makes it abundantly clear: if more links in the American food chain gave the consumer what they want — information, education, honesty, and transparency — the entire relationship between the food production industry and the consumer will benefit.