Stakeholder attitudes toward farm animal welfare

Abstract

We developed a survey to measure attitudes toward farm animal welfare, then targeted two US groups considered highly influential in this area: veterinary college faculty members with large animal/food animal emphasis (VCF) and animal science faculty members (ANS). The survey was conducted via e-mail. E-mail addresses were gathered from 58 animal science departments and 27 veterinary college websites. Our respondents consisted of 446 ANS and 157 VCF. In general, VCF had more empathetic attitudes toward farm animal welfare than did ANS. Both groups expressed greater comfort with the current production systems for beef and sheep than for meat birds and layers; dairy and swine were viewed intermediately. When asked about 15 specific husbandry practices/outcomes, more than 80% of our respondents agreed that three of these issues were concerns—flooring effects on lameness in intensively farmed animals, levels of lameness in dairy cattle, and poor/indifferent stockmanship. Four issues had less than 50% agreement—early weaning in pigs, lack of foraging substrate for pigs, beak trimming in poultry and toe trimming in poultry.Several background variables showed significant relationships with our summed attitude scale scores: females were more concerned about farm animal welfare than were males (p < 0.01); those with liberal political views were more concerned than those with conservative views (p < 0.01); and those expressing higher religiosity had less concern than those with lower religiosity (p < 0.05). Age was not significantly related to animal welfare attitudes. When presented with a 7-point scale where respondents could choose along a continuum between two anchor definitions and one midpoint definition “I believe in using animals for the greater human good, but we have an obligation to provide for the majority of their physiological and behavioral needs,” 71% of VCF and 70% of ANS chose the midpoint. There was a significant correlation (r = 0.541; p < 0.01) between respondents' self appraisal on this 7-point scale and their summed scores on our scale of concern for animal welfare.When asked to identify obstacles to enhancing farm animal welfare (if they felt enhancements were necessary), over 60% of our respondents chose to provide an open-ended (qualitative) answer. The five most common themes mentioned were economics, lack of consumer willingness to pay, tradition, producer attitudes, and inadequate welfare science research.