Adolescents Care But Don’t Feel Responsible For Farm Animal Welfare
This paper offers a host of information about U.K. adolescents’ attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and behavioral intentions concerning the welfare of farmed animals. While those surveyed indicated that they care about farmed animal welfare, they acknowledged that they know very little about the topic including about product labels. The results also showed that respondents were more likely to shift responsibility to farmers or government, rather than recognizing the role they play as consumers. This suggests that advocates in the area of farmed animal welfare may be well-served by trying to increase awareness among youth about the individual impact they have on welfare standards.
[Abstract excerpted from original source.]
“Adolescents are the next generation of consumers with the potential to raise standards of farm animal welfare—to their satisfaction—if their preferences and concerns are translated into accurate market drivers and signals. There are no published data about adolescent views of farm animal welfare to allow meaningful design, implementation, and evaluation of educational strategies to improve consideration of—and behavior toward—farm animals. Knowledge of farm animal welfare, as well as beliefs and attitudes about farm animal welfare and behavioral intention relevant to it were determined in a sample of U.K. adolescents, using a survey incorporating an extended version of the theory of planned behavior and novel assessment tools. Our results indicate that adolescents have only a limited knowledge of welfare problems for farm animals and welfare-relevant product labels. Intentions to identify welfare standards for the animals from whom their food was derived were weak. Although they cared about farm animal welfare and agreed with fundamental principles—e.g., the provision of space and the absence of pain and suffering—like adults they held limited belief in the power and responsibility that they possess through their choices as consumers; responsibility was often shifted to others, such as the government and farmers.”