Food Standards and Quality Control

Food Standard and Quality Control

Lesson 26:Quality Control

Consumer Standards

The consumer standards represent the consumer requirements of a product and generally are based on experience in use by the industry for the consumers. The consumers are not very effective as a group, but individually they represent the every day' demands for any given product. That is the main reason that before any new product is launched, the consumer testing is done to determine the degree of acceptability amongst and diverse group of consumers.

Consumers for their part are increasingly focused on a broader range of product attributes when assessing the quality of food and agricultural products and this has strengthened the role of private agrifood quality standards. For instance, at higher levels of income, consumers demand relatively higher levels of enhanced attributes associated with food quality, nutrition, health promotion and traceability. Food businesses operating in a dynamic agro-food system that is generally characterised by low margins and inelastic demand, have responded to these consumer demands with private standards as an integral part of their competitive strategies as they seek to communicate their approach to food quality and diversity to consumers. Private standards are used to inform consumers about different quality attributes and have the effect of increasing consumer loyalty while lowering the price elasticity for the food product concerned to reward food suppliers through higher prices for undertaking investment in quality management systems