The latest results from my Food Demand Survey (FooDS) are now out.
We've been doing the survey for six months now, and this is the first month we've noted big changes in several key variables. Changes are likely driven by consumer uncertainty regarding the government shutdown and by a widely publicized Salmonella outbreak that occurred just prior to the survey release.
There were significant drops in consumer willingness-to-pay for most meats (and non-meats) and a large increase in how much people said they heard about Salmonella. Although awareness of Salmonella increased markedly, stated concern for Salmonella only increased slightly. It was also interesting to note that 3.37% of participants reported having food poisoning in October, a 27.65% increase from September; a change that might be explained by people attributing prior illnesses to the outbreak in light of the news stories.
We kept a question added last month on awareness and knowledge of Zilmax (about 85% still hadn't heard of it) and we added a couple new questions on opinions about changes to the food stamp program that are being proposed in ongoing farm bill debates. I plan to comment on those result in a separate post.
