Preharvest Marketing Issues

SUMMARY Consumers of animal-derived foods continue to pressure suppliers of these foods on issues of food safety, environmental stewardship, and animal welfare. It is a marketing reality that consumers will not buy products that have a reasonable chance of making them ill. Food safety is paramount to marketing. Consumers do not tolerate any industry polluting the water or air. Thus, positive environmental stewardship behavior by producers is imperative to successful marketing of finished product. Compliance with all regulatory requirements requires industry wide education and motivation. Maltreatment of animals of any kind is a very sensitive subject among consumers. Producers must be attentive to the living conditions of their livestock. Simply measuring production as an indicator of animal comfort will no longer satisfy consumer concern. Professional guidelines must be developed that are reasonable for all. The California dairy industry has created a grass-roots organization to address these three consumer issues. This program could be modified to suit any food animal industry. Remaining competitive in the food marketplace demands that the industry be responsive to consumer interests. One of the first objectives was to conduct a survey among the industry representatives to learn the state of the milk production and dairy beef operations and to focus any developing program on the real needs the industry is capable of addressing.