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“When you have a huge industry that has all these different elements in the supply chain, but you only deal with the next one in line, you don’t get to have that conversation with the end user,” Micheels said. “You aren’t talking to the consumer about how you do what you do and why.”

Micheels said efforts by the beef industry to “tell its story” — either through advertising campaigns or the new Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef — are good first steps, and demonstrate that producers are at least aware of the challenges they face.

However, other observers are more critical.

Sylvain Charlebois — dean of the Faculty of Management and a professor in food and food distribution at Dalhousie University — said he believes the beef industry is spending too much time arguing with its critics and defending current practices when it should be adapting to meet new consumer demands.

“Instead of being strategically proactive, they’re playing defense. They’re trying to figure out a way to lecture the market — which is absolutely the wrong thing to do,” Charlebois said. “The market is evolving, but the industry isn’t.”

Event co-chair Virgil Lowe said part of the reason for organizing the Canadian Beef Industry Conference was to get all industry players on the same page and united in their pursuit of social licence. He said he doesn’t want to see the beef industry constrained by the same kind of public relations difficulties that have affected Alberta’s other major industry.

“I think we still have some public confidence, and we need to gain or build it before we lose it all and we’re in the same boat as the oil industry,” Lowe said. “Like the oil industry, we have a good story to tell. We just need to do a better job than they did at telling it.”

astephenson@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/AmandaMsteph