Perceptions and Preconceptions about Chicken and Pork Meat: A Qualitative Exploratory Study of Argentine Consumers in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The main concerns that I have with this manuscript are its experimental design and sampling techniques, including its low number of experimental units (people surveyed).
There were 20 people surveyed, all within the month of March in 2018, and all from Buenos Aires. The title of "Argentinian Consumers" is not accurate for this data set as it does not encompass a national type of survey.
There is no element of replication in the study design (for instance, how do we know that current events during that time are not influencing the consumers' responses?). Large-scale conclusions from a single point in time can be misleading. Over how many days were the surveys completed, and, is day of survey confounded with consumer? There is no real description about how people were chosen for the study, or what the leading question was to identify people participating as to potential bias of sampling.
The description of the analyses and presentation of results are well-done. It is not possible to fully interpret the results or authors' discussion points with the concerns mentioned above.
Parts of the introduction section are written in a biased manner, and this element also concerns me about how potential consumers were identified. For instance lines 30-32 it states "There is 30 consensus in the scientific community that a reduction in meat consumption would be beneficial to 31 biodiversity, land and water use, as well as the climate [1-3 among others]." this is likely true in many situations, but certainly not true in many parts of Africa and Asia where stunting of children from protein deficient diets occurs. Lines 37-40 likewise indicate the authors' perceptions and feelings, but do not present both sides of the story. For instance, several studies have shown how the livestock production system is evaluated impacts the conclusions, and that incorporation of concentrates into livestock diets reduces greenhouse gas emissions (because methane is a natural by-product of digestion and is decreased through concentrate feeding). I am not saying this is always true, but I am saying that how the information is presented by the authors is incomplete. This presentation style affects perceptions of readers (and participation decisions and responses from consumer surveys).
I cannot recommend publication of the manuscript in its current form.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks for your suggestions.
You can find attached the file with the explanation of the changes made to the paper.
Best regards.
Prof. José María Aulicino
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The number of the interviewees is really low. I believe it should be enriched with many more participants representing all categories of gender, age, level of education, financial status, etc.
I also suggest the use of written questionnaires in order to strengthen the results of the survey.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks for your suggestions.
You can find attached the file with the explanation of the changes made to the paper.
Best regards.
Prof. José María Aulicino
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Summary
The paper analyses the perceptions of Argentine consumers with respect to chicken and pork meat, as potential alternatives of the highly consumed beef, which also has the highest environmental impact. The aim is to reveal false preconceptions as to direct campaigns promoting more sustainable alternatives of meat consumption. The topic is very up-to-date, and fits in the scope of the special issue.
The paper is built on the qualitative analysis of the free discourse of 20 interviewees, based on the Grounded Theory approach. The method is properly presented, easy to follow, the text is well-structured and well-written. Findings are correctly presented and discussed.
Some minor suggestions are found below.
- The following piece of work deserves the authors’ attention: Poore, J. and Nemecek, T., 2018. Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), pp.987-992.
- The elimination of bullet points is highly recommended, with the text rephrased, where needed (especially Lines 139-; 180-; 277-; 292-).
- Table 3. The summary of references should be published, too, for all the four categories. The summary of A- chickens seems to be wrong (69 in the text, Line 239, while this value is 70, according to Table 3).
- Reference #16 was placed in a wrong position, which caused a shift in the references later on.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks for your suggestions.
You can find attached the file with the explanation of the changes made to the paper.
Best regards.
Prof. José María Aulicino
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The manuscript by Damico et al. entitled “Argentinian Consumers’ Perceptions and Preconceptions About Chicken and Pork Meat: A Qualitative Study” verifies negative and positive perceptions of pork and chicken meat to identify communication policies or strategies that may encourage the purchase of these two types of meat and modify the consumption patterns in favor of the environment. The subject is quite important as limiting high beef consumption or at least replacing beef with pork or chicken meat would be beneficial to the environment and global warming.
Some of the articles cited in this subject are quite old (ref. 17,18, 26, 50, 52, 54-57) published between 1999-2005 or some more recent papers cited were published in Spanish and they and are not available to the entire scientific community, therefore, the presented work brings consumer’s perceptions up to date.
The manuscript is well-organized and well-written. The abstract is concise and informative. The application of discourse analysis and its processing through CAQDAS qualitative analysis I find not common in the meat science and therefore the article may be interesting to the majority of readers. The authors identified some crucial negative attributes (e.g. fat, hormones) from information collected that still require a change in consumer perception.
Specific comments
Line 87: Please correct: with lower environmental impact than beef.
Line 275, Table 4: Explain what is the meaning of the negative word “same” in economic evaluation? Why is the word “healthy” negative for chicken meat?
Line 468: There is an error in reference numbering.
In my opinion, the manuscript can be published in Sustainability after minor revision.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks for your suggestions.
You can find attached the file with the explanation of the changes made to the paper.
Best regards.
Prof. José María Aulicino
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have made major improvements to the original submission. The only fault that I see now is regarding some language used in the introductory paragraph.
The authors are "backing themselves into a corner" with the wording and references used here, and I strongly recommend use of more "flexible" word choices that cannot "come back to haunt" the authors in the future as data and resulting analyses evolve.
There is consensus [recommend "widespread belief" rather than consensus; there is not consensus across the entire scientific community] in the scientific community that a reduction in the world average meat consumption [reduction in world average is not universally accepted; recommend change to "average consumption in high consumption countries", or "redistribution of global meat consumption"] would be beneficial to biodiversity, land and water use, as well as the climate [1-4 among others]. Nonetheless, there is no equitable distribution of food resources in the world, which sees hyper-nutrition in western economies and malnutrition or undernourishment in some developing countries.
In light of this wide disparity in food consumption around the world, it would [recommend "could be" instead of "would", or say "some have recommended..."] be particularly important to reduce consumption in those countries that show very high meat consumption, USA, Australia and Argentina among them [5]. [This is the opinion from a single source, be careful]
Author Response
To Reviewer 1
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for the additional time devoted to reviewing our research.
We reformulated the introduction by accepting the suggestions and using more flexible words.
We hope that we have understood the suggestions properly and that the introduction is now in line with what has been suggested.
Yours faithfully,
Prof. José María Aulicino
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Even though this work is a qualitative exploratory study, I believe that 20 interviewees is a really low number, no matter the title of the research.
Buenos Aires is a big city with about 3 million habitants. I cannot agree with the authors that "the information collected can contribute to the development of public policies...."
I strongly suggest to interview more people and to improve the questionnaire with information suggested in my previous review.
Author Response
To Reviewer 2
Dear Reviewer,
We would like to thank you for the additional time devoted to reviewing our research.
We are very sorry, but, unfortunately, as we have already explained during the first round, we cannot follow your recomendation for two reasons. Firstly, Argentina is in lockdown due to the Covid-19 Pandemic (and the current season being winter, we do not know when the governmental restrictions will be lifted) and secondly, it may not be methodologically correct to add new surveys conducted in 2020 to the existing surveys conducted in 2018.
We are aware that, as we are not able to follow your indications, your evaluation of the work will not be different in a third round. However, we would draw your attention to a key issue. Our work focuses on in-depth interviews and it is based on the Grounded theory. Like other qualitative techniques (e.g. the focus group technique), it uses small samples, with the pros and cons inherent to each technique. The Grounded theory uses theoretical saturation where the number of cases is unimportant. What is important is the potential of each one case to help researchers to develop a greater theoretical understanding of the area they are studying.
In the conclusion of this work, we highlighted all the limitations of this investigation, by explaining that the information collected may represent a basis for thinking about public policies to improve consumers information. We believe that this basic knowledge could be used to conduct further studies and strengthen the knowledge on the subject.
Thanks again for your consideration and your time
Faithfully,
José María Aulicino
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
There is not an important revision and data addition except for the addition of few new paragraphs that has nothing to do with the research data suggested to be gathered. Furthermore there are no interwieers from 18-25 year of age. This age group is young consumers that maybe exhibit different attitude towards the research subject.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks again for your comments.
As already explained in the previous rounds, It is not possible for us to increase the number of investigations made.
We have included in our manuscript the citation of some works in the literature that, like our research, use small samples.
Faithfully
Prof. José María Aulicino
