| Understanding attitudes toward farm animal welfare is an important element to enhancing the implementation of animal welfare science research. If people are unaware of animals' needs, or do not recognize welfare indicators within farm animals, sub optimal standards for care may become normal and accepted. Some industry stakeholders may resist enhancing farm animal welfare due to their attitudes on the topic. In an effort to learn more about peoples' attitudes toward farm animal welfare, I developed and implemented several surveys to assess attitudes toward farm animal welfare and developed an educational strategy to impact student attitudes toward farm animal welfare.;First, I examined the attitudes of students (n = 87) enrolled in two animal science courses. The findings from this study indicated that students have a generally low awareness of current animal production methods (27% were able to choose correctly how most chickens, pigs and dairy cows are housed). Furthermore, when presented with hypothetical, but industry-typical, farm scenarios, the majority of students responded that they would not be comfortable consuming/using products from these farms (63% for pig farm; 77% for layer chicken farm; 83% for dairy farm and 88% for horse training farm). In response to this evidence for insufficient awareness of farm animal production, a potential intervention strategy for educating students about farm animal welfare was developed. This resulted in the animal welfare judging/assessment competition. Of the 64 participants engaged thus far, 98% responded that they have furthered their knowledge base regarding farm animal welfare.;To assess the attitudes among influential stakeholders in animal agriculture, a second survey was developed. This e-mail survey was developed to conduct with U.S. animal science faculty (ANS; 58 departments; 1,466 surveys sent) and U.S. large animal/food animal veterinary college faculty (VCF; 27 colleges; 795 surveys sent). The respondents consisted of 446 ANS and 157 VCF. In general, VCF had more empathetic attitudes toward farm animal welfare than did ANS (mean attitude scale scores: VCF = 43.8; ANS = 38.3; different at P < 0.01). Both populations expressed greater comfort with the current production systems for beef and sheep than for meat birds and layers (P < 0.01); 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 variables showed 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).;Understanding attitudes toward farm animal welfare is essential in maximizing the opportunity for development and implementation of the welfare science research at an industry level. |
