Search results

Outlines the role of the Meat Livestock Commission in dealing with the BSE/CJD crisis in the UK meat industry. It covers the re‐launch of British beef, the history of the BSE crisis, the decline of the export market for beef and the increasingly political nature of the world beef and meat markets. In addition, the article assesses the impact of supermarkets, government and environmental concerns and the development of this key industry. The issue of reputation alongside natural products is considered and the complexities of a fragmented market. Suggests that there is no quick and easy fix to the re‐establishment of UK roast beef as a premier brand.

Examines the perceptions of consumers towards beef and beef products following the 1990 outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and changes in purchasing behaviour by a survey, in 1991, of a total of 252 consumers in two locations. Results indicate that risk perceptions towards seven beef products varied and although this was not related to the age of consumers it did differ according to changes in purchasing behaviour at the time of the outbreak: 31.3 per cent of respondents changed their beef consumption at the time of the scare but the proportion of consumers persisting with consumption change fell over time.

Purpose: This paper examines beef consumption practices in two villages of Tamil Nadu, India. It inquires into how the upper castes create spatial boundaries to separate the inside from the outside in their consumption of beef.

Methodology: The research was carried out in two villages of Kariacheri and Pudupattinam located in the Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu, India. We conducted 70 in-depth interviews, and observed beef buying and consumption practices.

Findings: The research shows how the upper castes separate the inside from the outside and surreptitiously consume beef. Dalits or untouchables are unable to create such separations, and as a result are stigmatized and ostracized. Moreover, the distinction between the inside and the outside is not fixed but is in a state of transition.

Originality and value: This study offers insights into how stigma is defined by spatial boundaries. These insights help to understand purity, pollution, and stigma in consumption practices as ongoing processes that are often created to justify social divisions and discriminatory practices.

The purpose of this paper is to disentangle the direct and indirect effects of three credence labels (Australian, animal welfare and grass-fed) on US consumer attitudes toward buying beef steaks. Furthermore, it explores the impact of consumer attribute knowledge, usage frequency, education and opinion strength on the magnitude of direct and indirect effects.

Data are collected through an online experiment with 460 US consumers and analyzed with path modeling.

The Australian label generates a 86 percent negative direct effect vs a 14 percent negative indirect effect on consumer attitudes, which means that US consumers do not make strong inferences to form their attitudes toward buying Australian beef. The animal welfare label generates 50 percent direct and 50 percent indirect effects. The grass-fed label generates only indirect effects (100 percent). The higher consumer education, attribute knowledge, usage frequency, education and opinion strength, the weaker are the indirect effects of credence labels.

The study focusses on consumers in one country (USA), one product (beef steak) and one label across three attributes, therefore generalization of results is limited.

The study offers a tool to agribusiness managers as well as to policy makers, NGOs and consumer groups to design and assess the effectiveness of communication campaigns attempting to strengthen (or weaken) consumer inferences and attitudes relative to credence labels.

Despite the wide literature on consumer inferences based on credence labels, this is the first study that quantitatively disentangles the complex set of inferential effects generated by credence labels and explores common relationships across multiple credence attributes.

Examines the likely effect of the changes in GATT on the British beef industry and the implications of these changes for the marketing strategies of British beef producers. The result of GATT changes is that there is unlikely to be any incentive for producers to increase production. Instead, marketing strategies will have to centre on increasing profitability by increasing quality and quality awareness with the objective of increasing margins. Examines the production and marketing of quality beef in the UK and proposes a number of strategies for the future.

This preliminary study investigated the factors which influence consumer choice of beef. A questionnaire and sensory evaluation considered the level of importance which consumers attached to the sensory (intrinsic) properties of beef, as compared to extrinsic factors. It was found that consumers use sensory properties to predict safety, freshness and overall eating quality but they can also misinterpret the quality cues. Expectations play a prominent role in evaluating beef quality and sensory evaluation revealed that when consumers were made aware of the beef cut, fat content and place of purchase, they altered their overall assessment of quality to conform with their expectations. It was concluded that consumers utilise a combination of sensory properties and other extrinsic factors to predict and assess beef quality. The particular combination used, however, appears to vary considerably from one consumer to another and with the particular use occasion.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an exploratory case study comparing one Brazilian beef processor's relationships supplying two different distribution channels, an EU importer and an EU retail chain operating in Brazil.

The paper begins with a short review of global value chains and the recent literature on trust. It gives the background to the Brazilian beef chain and presents data obtained through in‐depth interviews, annual reports and direct observation with the Brazilian beef processor, the EU importer and the retailer. The interviews were conducted with individual firms, but the analysis places them in a chain context, identifying the links and relationships between the agents of the chains and aiming to describe each distribution channel.

Executive chain governance exercised by the domestic retailer stimulates technical upgrading and transferring of best practices to local suppliers. Consequently, this kind of relationship results in more trust within the global value chain.

There are difficulties and challenges facing this Brazilian beef processor that are party related to the need to comply with increasingly complex and demanding food safety and food quality standards. There is still a gap between practices adopted for the export market and practices adopted locally. The strategies of transnational retailers in offering differentiated beef should be taken in account.

The research outlines an interdisciplinary framework able to explain chain relationships and the kind of trust that emerges in relationships between EU importer/retail and a developing country supplier.

The purpose of this paper is to present an economic evaluation of Uruguay’s beef industry competitiveness to quantify the effects of public policies (taxes, subsidies, social charges) on the various links constituting the beef export chain and estimate the impact of transfers of resources between the beef industry and other sectors of the economy.

The Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) techniques were employed to quantify the effects of public policies on the competitiveness of Uruguay’s beef industry. A series of PAM coefficients were calculated to assess the competitiveness of the beef export chain in 2010 and 2013 with comparison between the two years to make policy recommendations.

Beef sector returns captured by private agents decreased from 30 percent in 2010 to 10 percent in 2013. Competitiveness of the beef export chain deteriorated between 2010 and 2013 due primarily to higher prices paid for live cattle by the beef slaughtering, manufacturing, and packing sector. Uruguay’s beef industry transfers resources to the larger economy via social security payments and is penalized as a result of high capital costs.

Although three different sources of resource transfers were identified, more effort is needed to improve the precision of estimations.

The competitiveness of export chains is critical to the economic and social wellbeing of small-economy countries. They must be efficient producing for the international markets at the time they constitute pillars of the whole economy.

In today’s Taiwan, sha-cha sauce is an indispensable ingredient for beef hot pot and stir-fried dishes. The purpose of this paper contextualizes the history of sha-cha sauce in Tainan, the oldest city in Taiwan, and argues that sha-cha sauce, introduced by Chaoshan immigrants, has contributed to new styles and habits of beef consumption tastes and habits in the post-1949 Tainan and beyond.

This paper uses documentary materials, oral interviews and diaries to explore the relationship between beef consumption and sha-cha sauce. It begins with an historical overview of Taiwan’s beef consumption during the Japanese colonial era (1895-1945). Then, it focuses on two Chaoshan business enterprises: the Bull-Head, which makes the world’s largest “canned sha-cha sauce,” and the Xiao Haozhou, a Tainan restaurant specializing in sha-cha beef hot pot. Finally, this study analyzes Xinrong Wu, a Tainan gentry whose diary entries from 1933 to 1967 documented the changing dietary habits of beef consumption among Taiwanese.

The Chaoshan migrants played an important role in introducing the sha-cha sauce to postcolonial Tainan, and this input bolstered the beef consumption among Taiwanese. The production of sha-cha provided a reliable source of income for these migrants in Tainan, and major businesses like the Bull-Head became the international brands of Taiwanese food products.

The study, though limited to Tainan, reveals the symbiosis between popularization of sha-cha sauce and widespread beef consumption in Taiwan.

This study helps researchers examine the connection between Chinese migrations and food culture.

This paper is an original scholarly investigation of the relationship between food diet and Chaoshan migration in postcolonial Tainan.