Widespread fears that veganism poses a growing threat to the future of the UK dairy sector dominated the opening day of the Semex Dairy Conference in Glasgow.
Successive speakers at the event pointed out the success the vegan lobby is having in influencing consumer choice, with a consequent 17% growth in sales of “dairy-free” products in the last year, even though only 11% of people buying these products are dairy-intolerant.
Farmers were encouraged to fight back on social media by countering negative propaganda with positive tweets and Facebook posts. However NFU Scotland vice-president Gary Mitchell argued instead for a united industry voice to promote dairy produce and do more to counter the rise of veganism.
He also questioned the role of levy body, AHDB in promoting the sector, and said he would like to see more transparency in how the money collected from farmers is spent.
“Is the levy money being taken at the moment being used wisely? I’m not 100% sure,” he said.
“I don’t need people telling me how to rear calves, I want to know who is going to promote dairy.”
Dairy UK chief executive Dr Judith Bryans is today (TUES) expected to announce the launch of a £500,000 dairy promotion campaign in tube and railway stations, but the scale of the challenge facing the industry was spelled out by sustainability consultant, Dr Judith Capper who said that while vegans account for less than 1% of the population, they are a minority with “very loud voices.”
“We are predisposed to believe negative information: it takes five pieces of positive information to negate any one piece of negative information so every negative tweet or Facebook article needs good, positive, happy dairy information – and that’s a huge challenge for us as an industry,” she said.
“We have to focus on shared values because farmers care about the environment, animal welfare, safe and wholesome food. And be careful of posting images that can be misconstrued on social media. Focus on positive images.”
The industry was told to concentrate on trying to influence the middle ground rather than attempting to change the views of vegans.
“We need to communicate with consumers who don’t yet have fixed opinions of agriculture,” she said.
However not all the news for the industry was bad. Dominic Brown from consumer analysts, Kantar Worldpanel told the conference that dairy sales had generated £460m in growth over the last year, although he added that health is increasingly a “motivator of choice” for consumers.
“Changing health messages have led to a switch from dairy spreads to block butter in the last four years,” he said.
“Block butter is winning because consumers want more natural and less processed products.”
nnicolson@thecourier.co.uk
