Rita Robles

Quality Beef Schemes and Consumer Perception

Meat quality is currently conditioned to the fulfilment of different requirements concerning food safety and other ethic and social aspects. Nevertheless, restrictions and other considerations spreading faster than the above mentioned aspects could be applied in order to gain higher consumer satisfaction, which is to say, a higher quality. On the other hand, many different studies point to the existence of important shifts that manifest the need to increase the knowledge about consumer preferences and the fundamental need to support product differentiation by means of a quality labelling or different quality assurance schemes. This work analyzes different strategies related to the beef quality in a Spanish region (Castile and Leon), guaranteeing such quality with the presence of a quality labelling or a particular distinctive or brand, at the same time that some aspects concerning consumer behaviour behind beef quality are manifested. Data coming from the statistical treatment of different interviews are complemented with the information supplied by other secondary information sources, in order to construct the theoretical model to identify the main strategies to perform to promote the consumption of this product.

Integrating extensive beef production into the agro-food chain.

Abstract Agricultural outputs are immersed in a context of change characterised by an evolution from the quantity to the quality in accordance with consumer demand. Among the different productions, beef has been one of the more affected goods due to the confluence of different factors, such as the high international competition, the existing surpluses in the European Union, food crisis, such as BSE, and more recently, those aspects related to animal welfare and the environment. Integrating quality beef into the food chain, particularly the one coming from extensive breeding systems, shows up different aspects that are insufficiently well known, both from the point of view of the production as well as from the demand. This article tries to identify such factors in order to get a better integration of this kind of production into the food chain, by applying Delphi Technique, in order to summarise and present the information given by different actors, such as farmers, consumers, policy makers and administrative institutions. Results show a high consensus for the need to keep on working in the differentiation of the product as well as to improve the information and promotion of this product, being production costs or even the price, which is not so decisive in this case.