Presentation For The American Dairy Science Association
This presentation by Oklahoma State University Professor Bailey Norwood examines consumer purchasing decisions with respect to animal welfare by studying how consumers behaved during an egg and pork auction experiment featuring items from different types of farms, including cage-free and pasture systems.
In an experiment with 300 consumers from three U.S. cities, participants were asked to use their own money to purchase eggs and pork products that differed only by the level of animal welfare provided. The results suggested that most consumers believe that hens in a cage-free system are “happy” while those in cage systems “suffer.” Most consumers were willing to pay a premium to purchase cage-free eggs. Participants felt similarly about hogs from a shelter-pasture and hogs from a cage system; they were also willing to pay a premium for products from pigs raised under better animal welfare conditions.
Norwood underscores that this experiment does not tell how uninformed consumers would behave in normal grocery stores and that people will behave differently in various settings. In grocery stores, consumers behave more like consumers, while in experiments and voting booths, they behave more like citizens. Additional experiments allowed consumers to bid in an auction to ensure that hens and hogs would live under better conditions, finding that the average willingness to pay for the group as a whole was determined primarily by the outlying values of a few of the members.
In summary, this research concludes that:
- Consumers generally oppose the confinement of animals including battery cages, gestation crates, and gestation pens. Educating consumers makes them oppose cages more.
- Farm animal welfare is less of a concern to consumers, compared with both food safety and the environment.
- One-third of Americans believe that animals have a soul.
- 64% of Americans believe that God wants people to be good stewards for animals, which does not include placing them in small cages.
- One-third of Americans do not care about animal misery or merriment.
- When people learn more about how hens and pigs are raised, they learn they are actually treated more unethically than they originally thought.
- A slight majority of people want to ban farmed animal practices they consider unethical, even though products from animals raised ethically are available.
- The majority of people will and have voted in referendums for the benefit of animals.
- Most Americans do not want farmed animals to suffer, but they are relatively unconcerned about making them happy.