There is a well known saying, 'no pain, no gain' and that will be ringing true in the minds of Milk Link’s 1,600 producers, who are on the brink of reaping just reward for 12 years of loyalty and investment.A good reputation for healthy food is in farming’s own interest
PLANNING applications for various large-scale farming enterprises and the news cloned animals have entered the UK food chain have meant that, in recent months, farming has yet again hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Amy Jackson looks at what the industry should be doing to improve and protect its public image.
A comment that popped up on the web the other day was ‘Gotta feel for the farmer at the centre of the cloned meat saga. Poor chap never expected to be in this position…’
Indeed. Neither was Peter Willes from Nocton, I’m sure, foreseeing he would represent all that is wrong with today’s farming methods.
Nor did Christianne Glossop, chief veterinary officer of Wales, anticipate becoming a symbol of farmers’ drive to ‘always kill wildlife in order to ‘protect’ the animals who make them money…’ (to quote an animal rights group).
But they are, and we have to ask why there continues to be this type of public reaction to what we would consider reasonable farming activities.
Generally, British produce has a good name, but as Benjamin Franklin once said: “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”
Reputation is difficult to measure and easy to dismiss. It’s relevant to all sizes and types of operation and while it doesn’t appear on balance sheets, its close relation ‘brand value’ increasingly does.
Reputation is now recognised as one of the most important intangible assets a company can have because it can be turned into concrete value. So why would British farming be any different?
The tricks to building and maintaining a good reputation are actually quite simple, and based on ethical behaviour and perception rather than what is legal or possible. And this could explain where the industry has recently come unstuck.
Don’t do it!
The first rule is if you don’t want to reap the outcome, don’t get yourself into predicaments in the first place.
The farmer involved in the cloned meat/milk story ‘investigated whether this was legal at the time and understood that there was no issue’. But in January 2007, the news that a cloned calf had been born in the UK (Dundee Paradise, incidentally) raised a furore, so there was a pretty good chance that anything clone-related would spawn a similar reaction three years later.
Whoever advised him it would be okay should be hanging their head in shame.
Be prepared
Have your ‘ducks in a row’, whether those ducks be evidence, pictures, key messages - whatever you need to back a watertight case. You often get just one chance, so make it count.
This has been the Achilles heel in the case for badger culling. You can sympathise with the need to control TB, but the inescapable truth is the Imperial College trials fail to prove a cull will have a positive, cost-effective, long-term impact. In fact, they suggest the opposite.
Pat Bird’s recent excellent article (FG, July 20) outlines a convincing case for culling, but this all needs to be tied up in a readily-digestible, scientifically grounded argument which can stand scrutiny and, not only win the legal argument, but also hearts and minds in the moral one.
If the costs examined in Christl Donnelly’s research at Imperial College ignore the emotional and psychological penalties, then these need quantifying and adding.
If historic data proves culling works, then update it to give modern day credibility. Otherwise activists will continue to undermine and attack, and people will listen.
Be ethical
Consider that the MPs expenses row proved an action doesn’t have to be illegal to be unacceptable.
It’s important not to break the law, but it’s equally important to recognise if you’re determined to continue with an initiative that doesn’t have public support on ethical grounds - and I mean there is widespread dissatisfaction, not a few fringe lunatics out there with placards - you should weigh up the gains against the potential reputation damage.
Think global, act local
We’ve seen the adverts that portray happy ‘free-range’ cows in New Zealand, but recent media stories about tail docking and the inducement of calves, sometimes in an unviable state, to bring forward milk production, is damaging - and not just to New Zealand’s industry.
These sorts of stories create ripples around the world so bear in mind their impact in other markets.
At the other end of the scale, the fact Americans don’t bat an eyelid at huge feedlots and happily munch their way through tonnes of cloned meat each year shouldn’t convince us the British public will react in the same way.
After all, hormones used routinely and accepted in US farming are categorically banned in the EU.
Keep a united front
In farming, a single action can impact on consumer confidence in the whole industry, irrespective of whether the incident is isolated or endemic. Why is this?
One cowboy builder doesn’t bring the construction industry to its knees, after all, but food is a personal issue, hence the stakes are greater.
So it’s not surprising to see Food Standards Agency research shows between and quarter and a third of adults over 16 are concerned about a variety of farming-related issues in their food, from pesticide use to hormones, antibiotics and welfare.
Around 20 per cent are concerned about GM foods in general, but a new survey says 73 per cent of UK consumers would not eat the meat of a cloned animal, while 57 per cent claim they would not drink a cloned cow’s milk.
All of this means farmers have to consider whether they look after their own interests, or become collectively responsible for the protection of the bigger British Farming brand.
It’s easy to get frustrated at public reaction over these issues, but in an increasingly media-savvy world, one could argue British Farming plc should not be making these slip-ups.
While the British public’s plates remain full, there will no special dispensation for the noble art of food production.
- Amy Jackson is the managing director of Oxtale Public Relations. As well as 15 years’ experience in PR, she studied agriculture in Ayr and Aberdeen, has worked on farms from the age of 14 and spent a year and a half in Canada working on dairy units.
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Readers' comments (9)
Geoff Hall | 21 August 2010 8:52 am
Amy raises a valid point in this article. The Nocton Dairies issue has probaby done more to damage the dairy industry than anything else in the last couple of years... and for the record, Mr Willes is from Devon, not Nocton!
There are numerous reasons for this bad PR:
1. The site chosen for the intensive dairy on a fragile aquifer that provides valuable drinking water for local residents, shows poor selection in my mind. The risk of contamination is too just great.
2. Locating this huge dairy less than a mile away from village habitations, served only by minor roads was bound to cause controversy from the outset.
3. The very fact that the initial application was withdrawn perhaps indicated that preparation was not as thorough as it might have been.
4. Public consultation in the lead up to submission of the application was non-existent. Attempts to remedy this after the event were ineffective, indeed amateurish and displayed an element of arrogance.
5. One can get an indication of this by the very language used by Mr Willes when he calls people with valid concerns "the antis". Is this ethical... well you can judge?
So to conclude, I'm afraid Nocton Dairies has only itself to blame for this outpouring of wrath locally, nationally, even internationally. If there has been a loss of reputation to the British dairy industry, I for one am not surprised.
If UK farming really wants to avoid negative public reaction towards its industry for the future, it must look inwards for the solution. Seeking to blame the very people it is trying to influence is not the right approach.
Simples... to quote a well known advert!
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Julie, Potterhanworth | 21 August 2010 10:51 am
I wonder why you would consider an application for an 8100 cow dairy "reasonable farming activities". The concerns we have are mainly related to environmental, health and transport . Surely it is right that such a massive proposal, with huge implications for the surrounding area, should be scrutinised. Mr Willes & his advisors ought to be able to answer the questions put to them - if they can't, then something is very wrong.
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Richard | 22 August 2010 9:52 pm
Reading the media I find more hostility to farming , than I do in the real world . Paying for PR could be helpful , but it might not be . Keep trying to convince Amy I'm sure PR can be a great deal more profitable than farming
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clifben | 23 August 2010 11:31 pm
Is this so difficult to understand?
We consumers are increasingly concerned with animal welfare and more of us expect to be able to buy food that has been produced humanely and without massive use of chemicals.
Supermarkest know all about it and are trying to con us with all sorts of campaigns.
At the same time, supermarkets have destroyed the link between producer and consumer, using profitability as the key point rather than quality.
Government and its agents (incliuding Farmers Unions) have led the farmers up the path to tasteless and inferior product to the point where you may as well live on soya milk. So we have...
Bacon that you cannot fry anymore without watching a complicated chemical reaction leaving a black grungy coating on the rasher.
Beef without natural fat marbling with a bit of some waste fat tied to it.
How crazy can it be that a week in France seems to remind me what food should taste like and costs about the same!
French supermarkets would never get away with forcing farmers to produce inferior products whilst fobbing off their customers with third rate goods.
Maybe soon we will all be fighting over roadkill as the only tasty product of our countryside!
Do you think we are so stupid that by paying some PR company to paint some totally bogus idyllic " Archers" picture of farming that we wont notice the increasing industrialisation and increasing intolerance to wildlife?
Get your heads out of the sand and understand that the way farming is going is irrevocably downhill. It needs to change and it needs to reconnect with us, the consumers, please!!!
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Gillian | 24 August 2010 1:26 pm
Supermarkets force down the price they pay to farmers so that they can maximise their profits. Large farms can use economies of scale to make a profit. If supermarkets paid more we could carry on farming in the "traditional" way that is gentle on the land and gentle on the stock. Ergo, the supermarkets should either reduce their profit margin or consumers resign themselves to paying a realistic price for food. Is either of these likely to happen before scarcity of food becomes a major issue? You tell me!
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eryl jones | 24 August 2010 5:12 pm
well said clifben and gillian. When I become king I will transport every continental breed of cattle and sheep back to where they came from. Neuter these mis-shapen hybred pigs and go back to what Britain did well. Produce livestock that will live on grass and fatten off waste products and most importantly - taste great. No more cattle that cannot walk or give birth with out caesarian. no more sheep that are wider than they are long. Lets get back to the brreds that were meant for the British countryside and tell the supermarkets to stuff it.
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Anonymous | 24 August 2010 6:31 pm
Farming has been hijacked by big agro-chemical corporate companies (their ideas bought and implemented by far too many farmers for far too long), aided and abetted by scientists, food technologists and politicians, all self-interested, all living for today and all making a killing at the expense of us all. They all support the industrialization of our farming methods that deliver us cheap food at the expense of taste, sustainability, human and animal welfare. Simplicity in farming methods has been ignored for far too long for the sake of so-callled progress and provides us today with a system of farming that fails us all. Eryl, Gillian and Clifben express what many people feel and believe, whilst Geoff and Julie are spot on re-Nocton. None of us are anti-farmer, we're not viva, we just want a better way of farming for the future that will ultimately deliver us all simple, nutritious and natural food.
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Deborah | 25 August 2010 10:22 am
At the risk of being boring I agree with all of the above ... it's not about PR it's about integrity and not trying to re-route nature ... we currently have a glut of milk according to Arla - so why even contemplate a dairy which will produce millions of litres of white water a week? It makes no sense on any level. We used to be rightly proud of our farmers and farming in the UK - we need to get back to that and not with spin, but by action - starting with denying the Nocton Dairies style factory farms and convincing the profit-at-all-costs supermarkets to pay our farmers a fair price for a good quality product.
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Anonymous | 25 August 2010 10:31 am
In my honest opinion only 20% of the population are concerned about GM because the rest of them do not have a clue what it is, or more to the point what it may do to us in the long term! Is it really too much to ask our farmers to take a step back, gather all of the information that is now widely available on the www and ask is this the way we have to go? I don't think that it is. I can count on one hand the International companies that have the world at their feet with regards to GM and the crop sprays that go with them. The hundreds of articles that I have read that tell of super weeds that can't be killed off, the patent of seeds...the one year cycle of seeds, what they do to your health ...the list go's on and on. Ask yourself what is Agricultural about a scientific company selling you all the products that you think you need...the same company that supplies corexit and also manufactured agent orange...Is that not a scary scenario? If you don't think that it is then I am afraid that we are all doomed! Nature will always fight back! Wake up
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