Consumer trust in science has been seriously undermined by recent adverse publicity regarding reporting errors in climate change studies, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has warned.
Terry Jones, head of government affairs at the NFU told a seminar on the future of the food industry last week, organised by the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum, that serious damage had been done by recent adverse publicity.
“We are in imminent danger of losing society on the issue of climate change anyway - we’ve almost got climate change fatigue,” said Jones. “So with this news there is a serious danger that we end up losing great swathes of society who write it off as not based on sound science.”
Speed of glacier retreat
The controversy that has been raging in the press recently has related to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that exaggerated the speed of glacier retreat in the Himalayas and suggestions of selective reporting by the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit.
Melanie Leech, director general of the Food and Drink Federation, also recognised that there were “causes for concern” in maintaining the importance of climate change in the public’s mind. She suggested there was a shared responsibility among industry, government and others in keeping it at the forefront as one of the biggest threats facing the world today.
However, Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive of the IGD think tank, argued that its studies had shown that, within the UK, trust in the food chain itself had remained high among the general public over recent years.
“Over a 10-year period, trust in terms of price, quality, value and service is very high,” she claimed. “In fact, the food industry is the most trusted industry in the UK.”
The age of the ethical consumer
The challenge for the industry going forward, she added, would be to meet new expectations placed on it by consumers: “They do want things to be ethical; they do want Fairtrade; they do want health foods. And, in the future, businesses will be judged on whether they are a force for good.”
As far as genetic modification (GM) was concerned, which is seen by some scientists as offering a solution to some of the problems of climate change, Denney-Finch argued that consumers were “open minded”. But “93% of shoppers don’t know what GM is, and that’s a fact,” she added.
IGD research has shown that consumers want respected scientific organisations such as the Food Standards Agency to “tell the story” about whether or not it is safe and a viable proposition, she said.