Open up - it won't hurt a bit
by Owen Roberts

If you subscribe to the adage “Better the devil you know than the one you don't,” you perfectly understand the message - and the marketing implications - implicit in a new consumer attitude report about introducing transgenic animals into the food chain.

University of Guelph researchers David Castle, Karen Finlay and Steve Clark asked 1,300 people across Canada what they felt about transgenic pigs and salmon, two new technologies that are being actively developed for mass consumption.

Pork from the transgenic pig, a trademarked creation called the Enviropig, has an environmental benefit. The pig can degrade otherwise indigestible phytate (phosphorus bound by phytic acid).That eliminates the need for supplements and can reduce the phosphorus content in the Enviropig's manure by up to 60 per cent.

Transgenic salmon's advantage is primarily economic rather than environmental - its growth hormone is tweaked with the addition of a gene from another fish species (the ocean pout), making it reach maturity faster than conventional salmon. In aquaculture, faster-growing fish could mean a more predictable, steadier salmon supply, and potentially boost jobs in coastal towns where they're raised.

Are consumers interested in buying them? Not at first blush, the researchers found.

Consumers were initially put off by the label 'transgenic.' But the more information they were given, the more some of the group warmed up. For example, during their initial exposure to the salmon, they disapproved of the fact they contained another fish's genes. But later, when they were told these fish could be cheaper, the approval rates picked up (and who says consumers don't vote with their wallets?).

That might tempt marketers to skip the potentially negative introductory step, and go right to product marketing, hoping consumers don't ask tough questions (or unearth something unpalatable). But don't, say the researchers - new technology introduction is a process, not an event, and consumers have to be nurtured along.

Although the technology may be a little thick and cumbersome, it's usually vital background to understand the benefit. Consumers want the information, and in this study, the more information they had, the more comfortable they felt with the new technology, at least to a point.

That prompted Castle and Finlay to offer some advice.

“Consumers ought to be able to obtain the information they feel they need to make informed choices around the adoption of new technologies that concern their families, perhaps via labeling or broader information dissemination,” they wrote in the Journal of Public Affairs,August-November 2005.

When biotechnology first appeared on the scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s, everyone thought they knew the best marketing strategy: don't tell consumers what they don't need to know.

But in hindsight, and as this study points out, that approach was wrong. Consumers want more information, not less. And not all will reel at technology if they're informed.

The bottom line? Communicate and be open. It works.

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