Animal Welfare: What Do Consumers Think?
Evaluates a range of consumers’ attitudes and opinions relating to animal welfare, the credibility of animal rights groups, and purchase considerations for meat products.
This article describes a Roper study of 1000 adults who have primary or shared responsibility for grocery shopping in their household. In addition, Roper conducted 6 focus groups among consumers with different meat consumption habits.
The findings show that consumers consider price, meat quality, and personal health and safety before making dietary selections. Price is the primary factor when making a purchase.
Quality is related to taste, and also health and safety.
Consumer health concerns are consumer controllable (fat content) and consumer uncontrollable (farm events such as hormones).
Consumer awareness of farming practices varies. They are aware that antibiotics are used in pork production, but this doesn’t impact purchase decisions.
Government agencies are presumed to be primarily responsible for monitoring the industry.
Respondents believed that animal rights groups are concerned about the rights of animals rather than human health.
PETA is the most widely known animal rights organization, seen as extreme.
Consumers trust the media to report the news.
Consumers believe that producers know the animal production process and believe them above all others sources (83% confidence).
Consumers are unaware of existing animal care guidelines proposed by retailers and fast food chains. Guidelines developed by fast food chains are suspect to consumers.
Animal rights group rank 7th about of the top ten most credible information sauces, with a 51% of the people noting some level of confidence in them.