There are pockets of concern over the concept of genetically modified crops.
There are those concerned about how the impact of herbicides and insecticides used on crops and antibiotics and hormones used in livestock may impact human health.
These concerns permit beyond the assurances of science and Canadian food safety agencies, and as a result are having an impact on product sales, especially in light of several restaurant chains and food companies fuelling the distrust with ad campaigns that allude to their products being somehow automatically better because of no additional growth hormones or antibiotics used.
Of course that does raise a question is beef from an animal suffering from the human equivalent of pneumonia better for us to eat than an animal that was humanely treated for the disease, with prescribed withdrawal of antibiotic use followed before butchering?
That is however a debate for another time.
As much as food safety appears a driving force in terms of how farmers should produce food, how it is processed, and how it is consumed, a much more basic driver still holds sway in terms of food sales - price.
At the end of the day the majority of consumer鈥檚 main motivation in terms of food choice is the cost at the till.
In North America food is still a good value, even though many of us lament the cost at the till in a supermarket.
The problem is the grocery cart is never just food. There are toiletries, aftershave, hair spray, magazines, cups, towels and a broad range of other items that we do not eat, but buy at a modern grocery store.
While our grocery bill can appear fearsome, it is less so when we pare the cart down to just foodstuffs.
But even at that point many consumers opt for cost.
There is a reason major chains offer what are usually lower-cost store brands. It is because they sell to a consumer looking to lower their food costs.
That reality was brought into focus for me again recently via a post on Facebook from a local area honey producer.
鈥淢y husband and I are Canadian beekeepers. We are proud of the product we produce and the quality we are able to deliver to our customers. This quality is not achieved cheaply. We as consumers need to understand that if we support cheap food and products then we also support the means of getting those products; namely cheap labour and inputs. Food packers will always be looking to increase and/or maintain their profit margins so purchasing lower cost (often lower quality) ingredients accomplishes this. In the last couple of years, Canadian beekeepers (and honey producers in general) had been experiencing a fairly steady increase in honey prices, driven by a market shortage of bees and therefore honey. The profit margins of the honey packers such as Billy Bee (McCormick) who use a blend of Canadian and cheap source honey have been declining with the higher cost of the domestic honey. Honey can only be priced so high or the consumer will begin to purchase other sweetening agents over it - such as sugar,鈥� they wrote.
鈥淔ollowing good crops in these cheap source countries such as Argentina, packers bought up a boatload of the cheap honey and are now set for their annual packing needs. Most of Canada鈥檚 2015 honey crop is still sitting in our warehouses across the country as packers are refusing to buy. They don鈥檛 even want it cheap, they are full and we are really stuck in a bind. McCormick has even come out with a honey blend, called 鈥淣atural Farms鈥� honey that brings Chinese honey back into the Canadian market!!!!!! People buy it because it is cheap and everyone is happy - right?! We consumers need to open our eyes - cheap products are cheap for a reason - crappy labour standards and exploitation for a start, not to mention little to no environmental or quality standards.鈥�
And therein lies the concern.
We increasingly see consumers having trust issues regarding science, but then many are quite satisfied to trust health and safety standards, policing and enforcement is other countries.
Increasingly Canada is becoming signatories to trade deals with countries around the world. Some have a reputation on par with that of Canada, others do not. One only needs to look at some reports out of China with regards to food security and safety there to shudder.
It would stand to reason consumers would hold concerns along food safety standards in foreign countries at least at levels shown over herbicide use and GM, but that certainly does not seem the case, as any thoughts about quality standards are offset by the lower price in the store.
The question consumers need to ask is at what price point do they begin to worry about food safety standards abroad, because not all security systems are equal to those in place in Canada, and often trade deals and consumer decisions don鈥檛 seem to take that into consideration.
Calvin Daniels is Assistant Editor with Yorkton This Week.
