Food Demand Survey (FooDS) - July 2014

The July 2014 edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) is now out.

There was a  decline in consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for all food products, primarily because WTP last month was abnormally high.  In fact, WTP for all meat products is higher this month than was the case a year ago.

Consumers continue to expect to see higher meat prices in the coming weeks, but there is reduction in inflationary expectations in comparison to last month, particularly for beef.

There is a reduction in concern for all food issues this month relative to last, particularly for Salmonella, E. Coli, and "pink slime."  

We added three new "ad hoc" questions that I'll discuss in separate posts.

Food Demand Survey (FooDS) - June 2014

The June 2014 edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDs) is now out.

Some highlights:

• Willingness-to-pay for all tracked foods increased in June relative to May (and also increased relative to June 2013).  The largest dollar increase was for beef steak.
• Consumers continue to expect higher meat prices, and their expectations of higher prices are much more pronounced today than they were a year ago.
• There were relatively large jumps in awareness of news stories about Salmonella, E. Coli, and Mad Cow in June.
• Concern for GMOs and antibiotics experienced the largest drops in June,

Three new ad hoc questions were added to the survey in June relating to preferences for unpasteurized or "raw" milk.  The questions were prompted by some discussions with Wendy Rahn, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota.

Initially, respondents were told the following:

“Milk sold in most grocery stores is pasteurized, meaning it has been briefly heated to a high temperature to kill bacteria before cooling it. Some people want to drink raw or unpasteurized milk, arguing that it tastes better or offers health benefits. Many states do not allow raw milk to be sold in stores because of evidence of higher levels of bacterial contamination and the potential for food borne illness.”

Then three questions were then asked (the order was randomized across participants).

One question asked: “Suppose the next time you went to the grocery store to buy milk there were two options: pasteurized and raw, unpasteurized milk available for sale.  Both are the same price. Which would you buy?”  

The vast majority, 79.14% of participants, replied saying they would choose pasteurized milk over unpasteurized milk when both products were the same price at the grocery store. 

Participants were also asked: “Suppose the next time you went to the farmers market, a vendor offered to sell you unpasteurized, raw milk.  You can buy unpasteurized, raw milk at the farmers market or pasteurized milk at the grocery store.  Assuming both are the same price, which would you buy? Approximately 75% of participants replied they would rather purchase pasteurized milk from the grocery than the 12.51% who said they would purchase unpasteurized milk at the farmers market for the same price. Thus, changing the context of the purchase setting from grocery store to farmers market had only a very slight effect on the desirability of unpasteurized milk (increase from 9.5% o 12.5%).

Finally, we asked a public policy question.  Participants were asked: “Regardless of whether you personally are willing to buy raw, unpasteurized milk, do you believe that it should be legal to sell in grocery stores to adult consumers?”  Respondents were nearly evenly divided across response categories.  34.37% believe that the selling of raw, unpasteurized milk to adults in grocery stores should be legal, 33.68% believe it should be illegal, and 31.94% of respondents replied “I don’t know”. 

It is instructive to look at the break-down of personal preferences for purchasing unpasteurized milk vs. beliefs about whether purchases should be legal for others.  Of the 79% of consumers who said they would prefer pasteurized milk over unpasteurized milk in the grocery store, 38.6% thought unpasteurized milk sales should be illegal, 30.5% thought legal, and 30.9% didn’t know.  Thus, even among those who don’t personally prefer to buy unpasteurized milk, there is some fraction of the population (30.5%) who think it should be legal for others.  

FooDS May 2014

The latest edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) is now out.

Because we've been conducting the survey for over a year now, we are not only able to report changes relative to the previous month but also changes relative to the same month last year.

This month's survey reveals willingness-to-pay (WTP) for meat products is down in May relative to April and relative to May 2013. Consumers expect higher meat prices this month and report spending more on food at home and away from home.    

Some of the biggest changes witnessed this month relate to a spike in how much consumers said they heard, and how concerned they said they were, about greenhouse gasses.  The result is likely a consequence of the widely publicized release of a report on climate change by the White House on May 6 (the National Climate Assessment update).  

We also added some ad hoc questions to gauge public support/opposition for the controversial laws that seek to prohibit release of undercover reporting at animal production facilitates (these are derogatorily known as "ag gag" laws).

We randomly allocated participants to one of two groups.  The first group was told and asked the following:

Several state legislatures have considered bills to outlaw certain activities on livestock facilities.  The laws would prohibit a person entering an animal or research facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other means with the intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its owner.  the laws would also charge a person with a crime if he or she willfully obtains access to an agricultural production facility by false pretenses or knowingly makes a false statement or misrepresentation as part of an application for employment at an agricultural production facility with the intent to commit an act no authorized by the owner. Would you support or oppose such legislation?  

The second group was asked the same question except the first sentence was altered to provide some context for the laws and give some insight as to why the laws are coming about.  The first sentence for this group read:

In response to the release of undercover videos revealing cases of animal cruelty by animal activist organizations, agricultural groups have lobbied legislatures in several states to introduce bills to outlaw certain activities on livestock facilities.  

Here's what we found:

Regardless of which group a participant was randomly assigned, more people supported than opposed such laws.  Unexpectedly, adding contextual information increased the level of support for the laws.  Interestingly, providing contextual information also increased opposition as well.  This means that it moved people out of the "undecided" category.  Given that there are about 500 people in each group, the margin of error (or sampling error) on these questions is plus or minus 4.4%.  With the 1st group, we can be pretty confident there are more supporters than opponents, but with contextual information, there is a statistical dead heat.  

Food Demand Survey (FooDS) - The First Year

The Food Demand Survey (FooDS) has now been ongoing for a full year!  

We've pulled together summary statistics on the key variables we've tracked over time.

For example, here is an index of awareness (how much people have heard or read about an issue in the preceding two weeks) and concern over the past year, for the four issues that seem to top the lists each month (in total, we track 17 items). 

Awareness is much more variable over time than is concern.  

The spike in awareness for Salmonella in October, 2013 corresponds with a widely publicized Salmonella outbreak from a California poultry processor (Foster Farms).  

It interesting to compare the Salmonella spike in awareness with external data sources.  I searched the term "Foster farms" (shown in blue below) and "Salmonella" (shown in red below) in Google trends over the past year.  Google trends, according to Wikipedia,  "shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume."  The volume of searches measured by Google, both the October spike and the smaller rise in January and February, match up quite will with our measure of awareness shown in figure 2 above.  

Of course, the thing we have that Google analytic doesn't, is information on concern for issues on on willingness-to-pay for chicken and other meat products.

Curiously, despite the spike in awareness of Salmonella in October, we did not observe big changes in concern for Salmonella  or huge changes consumer willingness-to-pay or plans to buy chicken.  

Of course, our survey is more than just about this single incident or issue, but the preceding discussion is an example of the kinds of insights we hoped FooDS would deliver.

Read the whole summary here. 

Does information on relative risks change concerns about growth hormones?

Consumers often express concern about the use of growth promotants in animal agriculture.  In the beef industry, various growth hormones are administered to cattle to improve and speed the rate of growth (and some would say, improve the sustainability of beef production).  Upwards of 90% or more of feedlot cattle in large feedyards are given hormone implants.

Some consumers are fearful about the safety effects.   For example, the EU has banned imports of hormone-treated cattle from the US for over 20 years (a policy which probably has more to do with protectionism than actual safety concerns).  Other people have argued that these are the cause of decreasing puberty age of girls (which the data doesn't support).

As a result, many in the beef industry have have tried to communicate the fact that the risks from hormones are small to non-existent, and are much smaller than the risks from hormones in everyday foods.  The normal comparison is between how much estrogen is in a hamburger from an implanted steer or heifer vs. the amount of estrogen in other foods like soybean oil or cabbage.  Examples of such discussions appear at BeefMyths.org, US Meat Export Federation, the NCBA, and extension facts sheets from Michigan State University, University of Nebraska, University of Georgia, and many others.

Circulating on the web a while back were some discussions of using some visual strategies to communicate the relative risks from estrogen used in cattle implants.  For example, here is one blog discussing the use of M&Ms to convey the risks.  

The question I wanted to know is whether any of these sorts of communications actually has any impact on the people for whom it is intended.  

In the most recent issue of my monthly Food Demand Survey (FooDS), we sought to address this issue.  1,017 respondents were randomly allocated to one of three information groups or treatments.  In the first no-info group, respondents were simply told, “About 90% of feedlot cattle are given added growth hormones to improve the rate of growth.” And then, respondents were asked, “How concerned are you about the use of growth hormones in beef production?”  

For the second group text-only group, written text was added to convey relative risks of hormone use.  Prior to being asked level of concern, subjects were told, “About 90% of feedlot cattle are given added growth hormones to improve the rate of growth.  The added hormones add about 3 extra nanograms (a billionth of a gram) to a 3 oz serving of beef.  For comparison purposes, the amount of estrogen that naturally occurs in 3 oz of the following foods is: potatoes (225 nanograms), peas (340 nanograms), cabbage (2,000 nanograms), soybean oil (170,000 nanograms).”  

Finally, the third visual+text group was given the same written text but was also shown the above visual illustration using M&Ms allocated to different jars.  

Participants in all three groups answered with their level of concern on a five-point scale (1 = very unconcerned; 5=very concerned).

Information on relative risks caused a small but statistically significant reduction in the level of concern.  The mean levels of concern, on the 5-point scale, were 3.93, 3.71, and 3.66 for the no-info, text-only, and text+visual information groups.  

Without any information on relative risks, over 71% of respondents indicated that they were either concerned or very concerned.  Textual information reduced that frequency to 66%, and visual+text information further reduced the percentage of concerned respondents to 63.6%.