Milk myths busted by the online farmer factor

British agriculture advocate Jude Capper told the Australian Dairy Conference in Melbourne last week that farmers needed to get on the front foot by promoting their work online.

Dairy Australia launched an advertising and online consumer awareness campaign called Dairy Matters last year.

DAIRY farmers need to take to social media to bust myths about cattle welfare propagated by animal liberationists, experts say.

British agriculture advocate Jude Capper told the Australian Dairy Conference in Melbourne last week that farmers needed to get on the front foot by promoting their work online.

“There’s an awful lot of noise from a very small segment of the population,” Dr Capper said.

“We have to celebrate dairy, we have to make people feel good about their choices and if they’re choosing dairy, so much the better.

“We can all post images on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook — tell people what we do, tell people about how we care for our cattle. I think that gets a lot of buy-in from the consumer.”

The Oxford-based livestock sustainability consultant, who was named the UK’s Dairy Industry Woman of the Year in 2017, said online misinformation about dairy could stifle growth in sales if not effectively countered.

“When we look at the statistics, farmers are really trusted by consumers,” Dr Capper said.

“Data from the UK shows that 82 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds get their information from the internet and that gives (the dairy industry) an opportunity but also the internet is not regulated in the same way that the press is regulated, so they can be reading things, thinking that it is factual when actually its completely wrong.”

Last year, Dairy Australia launched an advertising and online consumer awareness campaign called Dairy Matters

Dairy Australia communications manager Glenys Zucco said a key part of the initiative was the ‘You Ask, We Answer’ website which allowed customers to find out more about their food.

“Dairy Matters was launched to educate the public about the dairy industry and to build trust and support for Aussie farmers and for dairy foods,” Ms Zucco said.

“We launched the campaign in 2019 across TV, digital platforms, podcasts and we launched a ‘You Ask, We Answer’ platform where the public could come and ask anything about the industry and we draw upon industry expert to answer those questions.

“We’ve had fantastic results. To date, we’ve seen uplifts in trust in the industry, trust in the product and support for dairy generally.”