FOR CONSUMERS E. RUST ROBERT

Transcription

1 179. D E V E L O P I N G E F F E C T 1 VE E X T E N S I O I PROGRAMS FOR CONSUMERS ROBERT E. RUST I believe t h a t i n considering an e f f e c t i v e extension program f o r consumers, we must approach it f r o m f o u r d i f f e r e n t d i r e c t i o n s. F i r s t, who i s o u r audience. Second, what personnel do we have a v a i l a b l e t o reach t h i s audience. Third, what media do we have t o convey o u r material. Fourth, what supportive s u b j e c t matter material i s a v a i l a b l e. L e t ' s f i r s t take a c r i t i c a l look a t t h e audience which we must reach. Basically, I suppose you could c l a s s i f y everyone as p a r t of your consumer audience. However, I t h i n k we r e a l i z e t h a t t h e person we must reach i s the individual i n t h e family t h a t i s responsible f o r t h e decision making i n food purchasing and preparation. About 90 percent of t h e time t h i s i s going t o be t h e female head of t h e household; however, I t h i n k we must r e a l i z e t h a t some shopping i s done by husband and wife teams; and i n these cases t h e husband i s most o f t e n a p t t o do t h e meat shopping. From t h e meager information t h a t i s a v a i l a b l e on consumer-buying p a t t e r n s, it would appear t h a t t h e husband i s o f t e n t h e major decision maker as f a r a s outdoor cookery i s concerned. By and l a r g e, however, our consumer audience i s the homemaker. I b e l i e v e we can l a r g e l y break up our consumer audience i n t o a number of d i f f e r e n t c a t e g o r i e s. These, based on age of t h e head o f t h e household, would be t h e group under 2 5 ( l a r g e l y newly established f a m i l i e s ) ; t h e group f r o m 2 5 t o 55, which would make up t h e l a r g e s t share of our popu l a t i o n ; and the group 55 and over, which makes up s l i g h t l y over a t h i r d of o u r household population. M y personal experience has been one of finding a f a r more receptive audience i n t h e younger households than i n t h e group 55 and o l d e r. A t t h i s point family food p a t t e r n s have been p r e t t y well est a b l i s h e d and I r a t h e r doubt i n terms of t h e response t h a t we a r e g e t t i n g t h a t we a r e j u s t i f i e d in expending much e f f o r t i n t h i s l a t t e r age group. A second method o f categorizing our audience, t h i s on t h e b a s i s of income, should a l s o be considered. With t h e current emphasis on work with low-income f a m i l i e s, t h e r e probably e x i s t s some e x c e l l e n t opportunities t o cooperate with t h e agencies responsible f o r these low-income programs i n developing e f f e c t i v e educational e f f o r t s i n t h e area of meat buymanship and preparation f o r t h e low-income f a m i l i e s. I personally believe we must keep t h i s income l e v e l i n mind i n developing an e f f e c t i v e program s i n c e o u r approach t o a family where food budgets a r e not a serious consideration would be considerably d i f f e r e n t than t h e approach t o a family t h a t was counting t h e pennies. Incidentally, i n a recent consumer survey which w a s done here a t Iowa S t a t e University we found t h a t only 1 7 percent of the responding f a m i l i e s had any f i x e d meat budget i n mind when they went t o t h e market. I

2 180. Now what about the personnel available for the development of meat extension programs. If your situation is anything like mine, you are already spread too thin to undertake a concentrated program in any one area. Personally, I believe that in the situations which exist in most states, where there is only one meat specialist, there needs to be methods developed for multiplying these efforts. In effect, this means placing the meat specialist in the role of a program leader and leaving the actual dissemination of the information to other personnel. I think if we look around we will find a number of people who will be willing to carry our message. First of all within our own extension organization our county extension home economists as well as our county extension agents can serve in this role. Most of them have meager training in the meat field and this requires considerable effort on the part of the specialist to adequately train these people. Time spent in in-service training programs for our extension personnel I believe is far more rewarding to the specialist than actual contact with the consumer audience. Then there are the meat personnel of our retail markets, locker plants, and for that matter even packing plants. Here again, I believe, we will find some excellent support if given proper leadership. This particular group has a built-in advantage in that in the case of the locker plants and retail markets these personnel have direct contact with the consumer at a time and place which is most appropriate. I have found any number of service clubs, women's groups, and similar organizations that have shown an interest in taking a tour of a locker plant or retail market or meat packing plant. Unfortunately, however, the personnel in these establishments are often poorly trained in the methods of education and are not well equipped with materials to assist them with any type of formal presentation to a consumer audience. Here the specialist, in a training role, could teach these people proper methods of presentation and bring them up-to-date with sufficient technical knowledge to give an adequate and intelligent presentation. Too often, I believe, we have looked at this audience of meat retailers and processors as one which we should serve with technical information. I wonder if we have really looked at it as a group that we can use to help strengthen our educational program with consumers. These are only a couple of examples of other persons we can use to carry our educational message to the public. I believe we can also work effectively with high school home economics teachers, 4-H club leaders, and if you will take a little time to think about it, I am sure you can find dozens of other possibilities in your particular state. It all boils down to the fact that the meat specialist as such has too many demands placed upon his time to concentrate on direct contact with the consumer audience. Of course, the available media for dissemination of information will largely determine which direction an effective program will take. Again, because of time limitations, there exist some excellent possibilities in using the mass media of communication for a vehicle to carry out the program. I don't believe we have developed the use of television to its fullest potential. Right now I am doing two regular 15-minute TV programs

3 181. on WOI-TV, which is both an educational and commercial station located at Iowa State University, as well as a number of programs for other stations around the state. To travel 150 miles to put on a five-minute television program may seem a bit ridiculous until you stop to consider the potential audience which you are going to reach. It certainly beats traveling 150 miles to spend three-quarters of an hour or an hour talking to an audience of about 30 people only half of whom are remotely interested in what you have to say. For that matter even this travel can be minimized with a little bit of planning. We have found most television stations receptive to the idea of preparing television tapes or kinescopes and thus one program can cover a lot of area. We use the VTR a lot as a means of convenience. This way it is possible to get in an adequate amount of product and use it for several programs all of which can be taped at the same time and thus minimize actual product costs and time expenditure. Radio, too, should not be overlooked, although I think in this era of television we are often apt to ignore it. I do two regular radio programs a month, and quite often we use these to answer questions which are sent in by the radio audience. One program every several months devoted to these questions can be quite helpful. I am not so sure that we do an effective job of covering the newspapers and magazines as well as the radio. These also offer some excellent opportunitiesfordisseminating our program information and reaching the consumer at a time and place when she might be receptive to some ideas. Incidentally, as far as timing goes, the radio programs seem to reach a consumer audience most effectively during the morning hours. A noon-time television program seems also quite effective for the consumer audience. You are on the air immediately ahead of the "soup operas" and at a time when the family is probably sitting down at the table and in a position to watch as well as listen. Again, if I may interject my personal feelings, I think this is the only direct contact which the meat specialist is justified in making. Whether we should classify publications, such as bulletins, as a medium of communication or as supplementary aid, I am not quite sure. These seem to fit in a gray area so let's consider these separately. There actually is a very limited amount of good material available. This is particularly true when we get into the area of buymanship, particularly from an economic standpoint. I have seen very little consumer material that discusses such subjects as costs per serving, cooking losses, amount of bone, and so on. This, I might add, is one area that consumers are vitally interested in. When creating any information on meat selection, storage, handling, and preparation, we should definitely keep this in mind. Of course, these bulletins are absolutely worthless unless we can get them into the hands of the consumer where they will be read. This presents somewhat of a problem in light of the restrictions that are often placed on the distribution of extension publications. However, I have nothing against preparing a publication for a commercial company, such as a meat packer or locker plant or, for that matter, a trade association and then letting them foot the bill for not only the printing but distribution costs as well. We have found one of the mst effective places to distribute these publications is directly at the point of purchase--the meat counter. Some states have used weekly consumer buying tips made available at retail markets very effectively for carrying out their program. I think this, too, is an area that is relatively untouched in our particular field.

4 182. Now about the information and supplementary materials available. As I mentioned, we have some excellent opportunities in working with food retailers, locker plant operators, and meat packers in training their personnel to meet the consumer groups. However, these people need something to work with. First of all, a specialist's time might be well spent in developing a teaching guide or lesson plan outline for persons in this particular group to use. This might include methods of presentation, as well as materials that are available for training not only the personnel but for distributing to the public. Then visual aids are usually needed by this group, and unfortunately are not as plentiful as we might like to think. Again, referring back to one particular area of meat buymanship that of the economics from the standpoint of cost per serving and so on, I have found very little of this information available in the form of visual aids. For most of these people I believe colored slides are the best medium to use. Most of these individuals have access to a 2 by 2 slide projector and screen where they may not have access to a film strip projector or a 16 mm. movie projector. Furthermore, slide sets can be altered to fit individual circumstances where film strips and motion pictures cannot. Actually, it is not too difficult for someone who is half-way handy with a camera to alter a set of slides to fit his own personal needs. I have seen some retailers do this very effectively with a set of slides that was made available on beef from the National Association of Retail Grocers. By adding a few slides showing their own store, they could make a very effective presentation to consumer audiences; and most of those that did this felt this was a very worth-while effort in terms of generating customers for their particular market. I believe that a group such as the American Meat Science Association could effectively develop some materials on a cooperative basis which could serve all the states and all the meat specialists in these particular areas. Another area that seems to be a problem for these retailers and meat processors is conducting tours of their operations. Many of these are happy to do this, but don't have the vaguest idea where to start and probably, at times, do more harm than good with such a tour. Developing effective guides for tours of retail meat markets, locker plants, or packing plant might be time well spent on the part of the specialist. By providing adequate material from a technical standpoint for the tour guide to use and by providing some suggestions as to how to most effectively conduct the tour, the entire undertaking might become a most meaningful consumer education device. It is also possible to use the medium of advertising to carry an educational message or to put it another way, let advertising pay the bill for our educational program. For example, we developed three one-minute spots to advertise beef. These were financed by our Iowa Department of Agriculture and were designed to be used as public service announcements on television stations. Therefore, these had to carry an educational message as well as advertise beef. The actual interest of the Iowa Department of Agriculture was to sell more beef. Our interest was to educate the consumer. By putting these two together, I think we reached a happy medium and also reached a large audience. Right now I am in the process of trying to convince one of our meat packers to underwrite a consumer film on pork. While

5 183. there are some pitfalls to this type of education, I think if it is approached with some care it is possible to help develop a more effective consumer program in terms of audience reached. Another medium that we haven't fully explored is the adult education evening school. We have a number of these developing in connection with high schools and junior colleges. They are apt to offer every subject from contract bridge to basket weaving to cake decorating to welding to accounting--well, you name it and they probably have it. One subject that seems to be quite popular is gourmet cookery. How about working with these adult evening classes in developing programs on food buymanship. Perhaps these could be developed cooperatively to cover all types of food, but certainly contain some good information on meat selection, storage, handling, and use. One of these days I hope I will be able to give this particular area a try. I think it holds some excellent promise. There is no one set formula for developing an effective consumer program. I think by and large because of the time and personnel limitations, the extension specialist must become an opportunist and use numerous persons, media, and materials to convey his message. Personally, I feel that we need some degree of coordination beyond what we already have in developing programs and materials for consumer education. The message which we are trying to get across is the same throughout the United States. I don't believe there should be needless duplication between private industry and the various colleges in the development of this information and materials. I certainly feel we need a greater degree of coordination and cooperation to make our job far more effective. ROBERT REDDISH: Thank you very much Dr. Rust, for that excellent presentation on consumer programs. And now before I introduce the discussion leader I would like to express my appreciation to the speakers, the discussion leader, the members of this committee and to those extension specialists who contributed to make this program possible. The man who is going to help us get some more out of these fine presentations is a meats utilization specialist from the University of Georgia, Dr. James A. Christian. DR. CHRISTIAN: Thanks Dr. Reddish. I've served on a few committees off and on but mst times I wind up doing considerably most of the work. But on this committee I've done almost nothing with the program. Dr. Reddish organized the program; he's done all the work; he even sent me copies of the papers that were presented this morning so I'd have a better idea of what we might do on the discussion. I have 3 or 4 little problems I'd like to present before we get into this discussion of the papers. One of the big problems is that we must create a desire for the packer, wholesalers, consumers, distributors, to want assistance from our universities and our extension program. How do we create this desire on the part of these people? In fact,