Angus VNR: Bridging the Gap
With animal welfare conversations on the rise, the Beef Checkoff began surveying consumers to gauge their perceptions.
“We asked people just what happens from pasture to plate? And the biggest thing people said is we don't know. Forty-three percent of consumers actually said cattle live in confinement for their entire life. And so for us that's just really telling. A lot of the positives were associated with more niche markets, small family farms that identified more as grass fed, organic, where a lot of the inhumane treatment that they thought was happening was more of a mass produce, large corporations,” says Shawn Darcy, director of market research, NCBA.
To add relevant perspective, the Checkoff launched a campaign that included links to the Beef Quality Assurance, or BQA, program.
“It was about a 30 second video, and that had the most weight behind it. It was on social media. And that was that high level message for most of those consumers that having a little information was enough for them. But then on our website, if they still wanted more, they could even go to bqa.org from beefitswhatsfordinner.com,” Darcy says.
Surveying the same group of consumers later, the results came back dramatically different.
“We had 70% of consumers say it increased their confidence that beef was safe. 67% say it increased their confidence the animals raised humanely. And over 60% actually made them feel like it was beef they could find at the grocery store. So not just that local farm or ranch, but everybody,” he says.
The campaign wasn’t just successful for the Beef Checkoff, but for cattlemen and women everywhere.
“We saw a significant increase in people agreeing that the positives outweigh the negatives of beef and beef production. And we also saw that even some individual attributes like, is raised humanely, the transparency of the industry, all of those metrics also increase during that time,” Darcy says.
Turns out, when consumers learn more about the greater beef community, they appreciate it more.
