27 September 2022 - Prof. David Hughes is Emeritus Professor of Food Marketing at Imperial College London. He gave the concluding presentation at the Feedinfo Summit 2022 held in Barcelona. Providing an overview of current trends in animal protein consumption, he was quick to focus on the main preoccupation of the shopper: the rising price of food.
He took a step back and said that high food prices are nothing new in the history of food prices as there have been peaks before. However, he did paint a picture of what’s going on at retailer level today to satisfy the shopper’s meat needs.
He argued that there is a surge in “value” meats at the moment at retail level and premium is also here to stay for the households with higher incomes. It will be the “meat in the middle that will take the stick,” he observed.
Value offerings are increasing due to consumer demand and to retailer price wars, he said. “Shoppers are looking for more and more deals and cutting back on non-essentials. Consumers may be feeling guilty about trading down, but they are doing it anyway.”
Besides price, consumers generally make meat purchasing decisions based on the animal welfare or environmental impact the product they wish to buy may have, but this decision process has pretty much been put on the backburner and depends on where the consumer comes from, Prof. Hughes said.
When price concerns ease in the future, social pressures that dictate what we eat and what we can’t eat will come back in full force, Prof. Hughes predicted. He also anticipates that after the rise of the “Nutri-score” label in recent years, we will likely witness the introduction of what he describes as the “Eco-score”.
“The Eco-score is coming our way. Consumers want to know where their food comes from,” he said, highlighting the chances that the monitoring of food’s carbon footprint will be common practice and food suppliers will be in a race to change from red light to green light status.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, though, as per capita meat consumption in higher income countries is unlikely to decline. Quoting a survey, Prof. Hughes pointed out that consumers trust farmers more than any other party in the food value chain. However, he argued that this is no reason to be complacent.
“We assume that people know about the health benefits of animal protein, but do they?” he said. For him, it is a perception issue and it’s a matter to raise with the retailers in order to give meat products the better labels, those with the adjectives such as “cage-free” or “omega-rich” consumers like to see on products they buy.
“If you don’t have the adjectives, your meat will likely be treated as a basic commodity,” he warned.
