CONSUMER PERCEPTION ON ALTERNATIVE POULTRY



T. Farina and S. Almeida / International Food and Agribusiness Management Review Vol 5 Iss 2 2003

There are a growing number of studies on the market of organic products in Brazil.
However, few address consumer perception (Rezende, 2001). This article intends to
contribute to the knowledge of this market, presenting the results of an exploratory study
on consumer perception, in Sao Paulo, of alternative chicken - free range, natural, and
organic. As the research was conducted on a small sample and only in Sao Paulo, there is
no intention to make inferences on the behavior of the Brazilian consumer. Nonetheless,
the article exposes some very interesting results for discussion.

Chicken presents an additional difficulty for consumer studies: there is no organic
chicken sold in the Sao Paulo market! We found free-range chickens and natural
chickens, alternatives to the conventional production, but none that correspond exactly to
what would technically be defined as organic. This happens because, in order to produce
an organic animal, the feed must be organic, which considerably increases the production
costs (Torne-Celer, 2001).

This article is organized in four parts. Section 2 provides a brief analysis of the
alternative aviculture agribusiness system, which presents the technical characteristics
of the production of alternative chickens, and identifies, based on the available literature,
the coordination problems of this system. It shows the importance played by brand name
and by certification. Section 3 contains the main contribution of the work, presenting the
methodology of the research conducted on consumers and the analysis of the results.
Section 4 concludes the article
.

2. A Brief Analysis of the Alternative Aviculture Agribusiness System

The characteristics that differentiate alternative chicken from conventional refer to the
production process. Therefore, though the focus of this work is the consumer’s
perception, it is important to describe the main differences of these production processes.

Section 2.1 contains an analysis of the technical characteristics of the different
production processes and is based on the work of Torne-Celer (2001) about the Brazilian
agribusiness system of alternative chicken.

2.1 Analysis of the Technical Characteristics

The production of conventional chicken is always conducted in the form of confinement.
The lineages utilized are characterized by a high feed conversion rate, which increases
the growth rate. The feed is composed of grains, fat, and animal flour. Also added to the
feed are vitamins and antibiotics permitted by the Brazilian law.

The use of these medications has been increasingly criticized in scientific studies due to
the risks of selection of resistant bacteria. Moreover, the reason for using growth-
promoting antibiotics is exclusively economic, since they do not improve the quality of the
meat in any way, but merely reduce the slaughter time and the mortality index,
increasing productivity. Another factor that reduces production costs is the possibility of



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