Is it really so strange?
Opper 1878

Is it really so strange?

A short while ago I noticed with much interest and a little excitement an article in the Guardian newspaper weekend magazine on the food ingredient manufacturing industries (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/21/a-feast-of-engineering-whats-really-in-your-food). It’s not an area that receives many column inches in the popular press so I hoped for an insightful read from a 21st century consumer perspective. Sadly I’d set my sights a little high.

The article in question ‘Strange Fruit’, whilst including some literal truths took (rather lazily in my opinion) a predominantly pejorative approach toward presenting a little known B2B industry to the wider ‘consumer’ world and used one of its key industry outings, Frankfurt’s Food Ingredients Europe (FiE) 2013 as the launch pad.

I’ve spent fifteen years providing recruitment services to the ingredients industries supporting growth and succession in progressive organisations with strong, often ethical codes of conduct and so I was left bemused and a little frustrated by the article. I believe an opportunity was missed to provide a more balanced picture.

The author chose to characterise the food ingredients industries as singularly Machiavellian, seeking to manipulate, exploit or obviate nature and/or what’s natural in pursuit of pure profit – this is not my experience. As a fellow attendee of Food Ingredients Europe and other, similar expositions I’d like to correct some of the key assertions made by the author.

An Ingredients Arms fair?

Describing the venue for 2013’s FiE as blade-runner like (depending on your appreciation of visionary science fiction I suppose) is perhaps a little over the top. FiE isn’t a dystopian future scape – it’s a trade show – and a pretty classic one at that. I’ve never been to an arms fair (perhaps the author has) but I feel the comparison to one might smack of dramatization. As for entry (the author notes it’s not open to the public – she has to bluff her way in) – what B2B trade show isn’t aimed at industry professionals? One assumes it’s the same for semiconductors and steering racks as it is for starch replacers. Really not so menacing.

Cognitive Dissonance?

The article presents as problematic the idea that the kind of large B2B organisations presenting at FiE might operate in multiple industries providing ingredients and/or technologies for food, chemical and automotive sectors without stress or discomfort – but why must this be so?

Innovations can (and arguably should where possible) benefit multiple industries through – and here’s the key - application. Application means that enzymes technologies for example can be found used in food, brewing, detergents, textiles and fuels. Application means benefitting from the same core ingredient or technology not consuming the same product in the same form.

Bettering nature?

We’re told that the FiE conference is the domain of people who believe they can better all aspects of nature – for profit. Yes synthetics exists in this industry just as they do in many others but more often innovation in food ingredients is about applying science to nature, understanding and harnessing its qualities for application.

I’m no na?ve –of course there is light and shade in this industry as in any other (including journalism) but it is wrong to serve up the whole of either sector as duplicitous, secretive or singularly profit driven. There are standard bearers to be found in both, organisations and individuals working for the benefit of people because of the capacity to make profit.

I’m fully behind the drive to encourage health and wellbeing through a keen interest in the foods we consume. I, like the author, prefer my bread ‘browned solely from the application of heat’ (sometimes I even make my own) but I also recognise that food manufacture and consumption ceased to be a subsistence activity a long time ago.

From a recruiters perspective it concerns me that articles such as this do not offer a balanced view to the reader of the relationship between industry and consumer. Stonewalling the benefits of technology stifles debate and potentially drives creative, interested minds away from the industry. Pejorative rhetoric creates a climate of fear and scepticism surrounding science and the amazing things it can achieve. It’s a problem as old as the enlightenment itself.

About INPROE

INPROE, Ingredients Professional Europe offer Personalised Executive Search, People Intelligence, Industry Mapping and Targeted Introduction services for the Ingredients Industries.
Find out more at https://www.inproe.co.uk/is-it-really-so-strange/

Jon Wood

Head of Strategy at xRI | Non-Exec Director at Apex | Non-Exec Director at 3C Wheelchair and Seating Service

9 年

I too was disappointed by the Guardian piece. The author had a clear agenda and set of opinions which directed the tone and style of the piece. Having attended the event myself as a food ingredients professional I must say that the FIE described was almost unrecognisable from the FIE I attended. It's nice to see a well considered response from someone knowledgable in the subject area. The food ingredients industry (amongst others) has significant challenges regarding public perception, particularly around technologically complex issues where the media play a huge role in swaying public opinion (for example, genetically modified materials). Painting the entire food ingredients industry as dark and sinister in a national newspaper is not particularly helpful!

Yvonne Kaptein MBA

Product Manager Food Ingredients Caldic Benelux

9 年

Th food ingedients industry increasingly deals with consumer trust on one hand and fierce competition on the other. Losing the trust is loosing it all. So the critical consumer will increasingly drive integrity, transparency and enhanced communication in this industry. As a consequence, efficiency and margins will be rebalanced. It is good to have critical consumers and journalists so companies stay responsible and thus viable. But they will never tell the whole public how they do things.

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David Guerrand

Biotech Business Director at Lallemand

9 年

Thanks Neil for sharing. Fully agree with your comments. Recently on french TV CANAL+ an investigation about winemaking has been released (Vin Fran?ais : La Gueule de Bois, literally "French Wine, The Hangover") also loaded with pejorative, caricatural, non-balanced opinions on some of the most traditional winemaking aids -yeast or isinglass just to mention a couple of them.

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