Consumers’ perceptions of organic food processing - first insights into milk and juice processing

The project “ProOrg” aims at developing a code of practice (CoP) for organic processors because they lack a guide for selecting appropriate technologies for organic processing. When developing processing technologies for organic products, consumers’ expectations and preferences on quality and transparency should be taken into account. Thus, this part of the project aims at exploring consumers’ knowledge, expectations and opinions of selected processing technologies in organic foods. Consumers knew very little about processing technologies and rather focused on organic production of raw material. Asking participants for their preferences for specific processing technologies often overstrained their judgement, even though some basic information was provided. We argue that organic food processors have to undertake responsibility by anticipating consumer expectations and by processing in line with overall organic principles.