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New EU regulations require more stringent country-of-origin labeling, while imports of broiler meat from non-EU countries are increasing. In light of these trends, we have studied citizens' and producers' perceptions of broiler meat originating from Belgium versus Brazil and their perception of broiler production in Belgium versus Brazil. A particular focus was the association between country of origin and perceived level of animal welfare. We also investigated the perception of scaling-up and outdoor access in terms of perceived level of animal welfare. Cross-sectional survey data was collected among Flemish citizens (n = 541) and broiler producers (n = 114). In accordance with literature on general farm animal welfare, both stakeholder types claimed to allocate great importance to broiler welfare and generally agreed with the Welfare Quality model of broiler welfare. Citizens disagreed with the producers that 1) consumers are not willing to pay more for higher welfare products, 2) that broilers suffer little, 3) that broiler welfare in current Belgian production units is generally non-problematic, 4) that scaling-up production units would not have a positive impact on profitability nor a profoundly negative impact on broiler welfare, and 5) that the impact of providing broilers with outdoor access is negative for consumers, farmers, and broilers. Country of origin had a strong influence on the perception of both broiler production and broiler meat. Belgian citizens, and producers (much more than citizens) considered nearly all aspects related to broiler production and broiler meat to be significantly superior for chicken produced in Belgium compared to Brazil. Further research should focus on how these perceptions influence purchase intentions and production decisions. Future avenues for research are to quantify market opportunities for country-of-origin labeling and to investigate to which extent stakeholders' perceptions correspond with reality.

Concern about the welfare of production animals is growing among various stakeholders, including the general public. Citizens can influence the market for premium welfare products by expressing public concerns, and consumers—the actors who actually purchase products—can do so through their purchasing behavior. However, current market shares for premium welfare products are small in Europe. To better align purchase behavior with public and individuals’ concerns, insight is needed into determinants that influence the intention to purchase premium welfare products. A cross-sectional online survey of 787 Flemish milk consumers was conducted to investigate attitudes toward and intention to purchase animal-friendly milk. More than half of the sample (52.5%) expressed the intention to purchase animal-friendly milk. Linear regression modeling indicated that intention was positively influenced by (1) higher perceived product benefits from animal-friendly milk (milk with more health benefits and higher quality); (2) higher personal importance of extrinsic product attributes such as local production and country of origin; (3) higher personal importance of animal welfare; (4) a more natural living oriented attitude toward cows; and (5) a more positive general attitude toward milk. Intention was negatively influenced by (1) a stronger business-oriented attitude toward cows; and (2) by a higher personal importance attached to price. These insights in key components of purchase intention can assist producers, the dairy industry, and retailers to position and market animal-friendly milk.

The aim of this paper is to provide up-to-date information about the status of broiler production in Flanders (the northern region of Belgium) and the opinion of Flemish broiler producers on animal welfare. Our review revealed that intensification of Flemish broiler production has continued, as characterised by a decreasing number of production plants with up-scaled production. Results of a quantitative survey of Flemish broiler producers showed that the typical broiler house is 21 years old and houses 35,000 mixed-sex Ross broilers indoors on wood shavings or straw. The commonly-used modal management implies thinning one-fifth of the flock at the age of 35 days. The remaining broilers are slaughtered when they are 42 days old and weigh an average of 2.4 kg. The median unassisted mortality rate is 2% and another 0.5% are culled. Further scaling-up of production units is not viewed favourably by producers, particularly as related to consumer acceptance. Producers state they place great importance on animal welfare and do not agree that broiler welfare is poor. A small minority of producers plan to invest in improving broiler welfare in the near future. They see few advantages in paying more attention to broiler welfare or providing outdoor access to improve their public image and consumer acceptance. Producers define animal welfare mainly in terms of good health, feeding and housing and consider aspects that relate to the birds’ ability to express appropriate behaviour as less important. We discuss how this concept of ‘animal welfare’ corresponds to that reported by other people with farming backgrounds. Unfortunately this belief contradicts the perception of citizens and consumers and the assumptions underlying the proposed European standards for monitoring farm animal welfare as developed by the Welfare Quality® consortium.

Farm animal welfare in livestock production is a topical and important issue attracting growing interest of policy makers, consumers, stakeholders in the supply chain and others. While there is much public interest in the issue this is not reflected in the supply and market shares of animal food products that are produced under welfare standards that exceed legislative requirements. Given the obstacles to devising stricter legislative standards, higher welfare animal food products are mostly made available through market-based approaches. This paper discusses different challenges and opportunities for a range of public and consumer policies and makes recommendations on how these might be strengthened. The paper does not report primary empirical findings but assembles available knowledge on citizen and consumer attitudes and perceptions towards animal welfare from various research disciplines. We argue that in order for public and consumer policies to be (more) efficient and effective, it is important to develop a segmented and targeted strategy. This paper will thus elaborate on what information could and should be provided to whom. This implies the need for a good understanding of how people conceptualize farm animal welfare. Further, information provisioning should address the needs and expectations of those specific consumer segments most likely to be motivated to purchase higher welfare products. Based on the assembled information, opportunities and challenges for information provisioning and communication to the public and consumers are identified. The merits and limitations of different forms of information provisioning and animal welfare labelling are discussed and recommendations are set forth for future research.

Stocking density is a prominent topic in public debates on animal welfare and was one of the reasons for the European Commission to set limits to the stocking density on broiler farms. The objective of this paper was to calculate in detail the financial impact of changes in technical and management variables due to decreasing stocking densities in line with new European Union (EU) regulations. Therefore, the productive performance indicators such as BW, mortality, or feed conversion and farm technical data such as water consumption and heating of 3 independent experiments conducted at a poultry research station in Flanders (Belgium) were combined. Using the partial budget technique only those elements that change with stocking density have been taken into account. Reducing stocking density implies a recalculation of all costs on a reduced number of birds. This yields an economic situation that leaves hardly any profit margin for most of the broiler producers under the present market conditions. It was found that the critical threshold of stocking density for maintaining profitability under the present market and technical conditions is around 46 kg/m(2), thus well above the EU maximum of 42 kg/m(2). It is shown, however, that with changing broiler feed and meat prices, the impact might be less negative in economic terms.

In most European countries, male piglets being reared for meat are physically castrated without anaesthesia in order to avoid boar taint and to safeguard sensory meat quality. This method is increasingly criticised for its violation of piglet welfare. Alternative methods are being researched and castration with anaesthesia or analgesia and vaccination (immunisation) against gonadotropin-releasing hormone (using Improvac (R), Pfizer GmbH) have been proposed as possible solutions. In addition to efficacy, the successful introduction and adoption of the vaccine method by stakeholders in pig supply chains are expected to depend on a favourable reception by consumers. This large-scale quantitative cross-country study (n = 4031) involving representative samples of consumers in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium does not support the reserved attitude of stakeholders who fear potential low market acceptance. The vaccine method was actually preferred by the majority of consumers surveyed (69.6% of the participants) and it was perceived as equally effective in terms of avoiding boar taint; 43.8% of the consumers reported an intention to seek out pork from pigs where the vaccine had been used to control boar taint, whereas 33.7% reported an intention to avoid pork from pigs physically castrated with anaesthesia. Consumers' favourable dispositions to the vaccine method were independent of dominant ethical, health or price orientations when purchasing pork.

The Welfare Quality® project has developed an operational definition of farm animal welfare, which consists of 12 criteria grouped into four principles (‘good feeding’, ‘good housing’, ‘good health’ and ‘appropriate behaviour’). As part of a larger survey, 204 farmers, 72 vegetarians, and a representative sample of 459 adult citizens in Flanders (Belgium) scored the importance of each of the 12 criteria on a 1–10 scale, and divided 100 points across the four principles according to the perceived relative weights for farm animal welfare. These data were analysed to verify quantitatively whether (1) the grouping of 12 criteria into the four principles, and (2) the relative weights used by Welfare Quality® for aggregating the 12 criteria into an overall welfare judgement correspond with the perception of these three stakeholder groups from a region and setting not previously covered by Welfare Quality® studies. Moreover, the effects of various socio-demographic variables on the importance allocated to the welfare criteria and principles were investigated. Vegetarians and females gave consistently higher importance scores to all 12 criteria as compared with farmers, citizens and males, respectively, particularly for the (criteria belonging to the) principle ‘appropriate behaviour’. Farmers allocated more weight to ‘good feeding’ than did vegetarians or citizens. These differences confirm that farmers view animal welfare more in terms of biological functioning (instead of affective states or natural living) as compared to other citizens, and vegetarians in particular. As the concept has a different meaning to different people, any operational definition of animal welfare is unlikely to match equally well with the perception of every single stakeholder group or person. The structure of the Welfare Quality® operational definition with the 12 criteria aggregated into four principles, corresponds well with the opinion of the stakeholders as they judged all 12 criteria as rather important to extremely important for farm animal welfare. Factor analysis restricted to contain four factors confirmed the grouping of the criteria into the correct principles. Exploratory factor analysis using Eigenvalues > 1 as extraction criterion indicated, however, that from the citizen perspective two principles (‘good feeding & health’ and ‘appropriate behaviour & housing’) rather than four would suffice. The main discrepancy with the Welfare Quality® approach concerns the aggregation procedure: the stakeholders did not consider all four principles as equally important, and the relative importance allocated to criteria corresponded poorly across principles. Some of these discrepancies were consistent across the three different stakeholder groups.

This study investigated the effect of balanced, nonpersuasive information related to safety, healthiness, and sustainability of aquaculture on the image of farmed fish among European consumers. It was demonstrated that there is neither positive nor negative influence of this type of information on the predominantly positive image of fish from aquaculture. Consumers who were exposed to information related to the EU origin and aquaculture related guarantee reported a more positive image of farmed fish. These results provide valuable input for transparent communication about fish farming practices which might increase consumer trust and will not harm the image of fish from aquaculture. Increasing consumers' knowledge about aquaculture and its positive effects on the image of farmed fish is also discussed as a pathway for maintaining and improving aquaculture's positive image in the future.

The results of two independent empirical studies with Flemish citizens were combined to address the problem of a short fall of information provision about higher welfare products. The research objectives were (1) to improve our understanding of how citizens conceptualize farm animal welfare, (2) to analyze the variety in the claimed personal relevance of animal welfare in the food purchasing decision process, and (3) to find out people’s needs in relation to product information about animal welfare and the extent to which the current information caters to these needs. The first study consisted of a survey conducted in three consecutive years (2000–2002, n = 521) and was complemented with more recent qualitative data from four focus group discussions (2006, n = 29). Citizens’ conceptualization of farm animal welfare matched reasonably well with those in the scientific literature, although it is clearly influenced by a lower level of practical experience and a higher weight of empathy. In general, respondents indicated that animal welfare was an important product attribute, although it was less important than primary product attributes such as quality, health, and safety. Moral issues, rather than a perception of higher quality, were the main influence on preferences for higher welfare products. At present, higher standards of animal welfare are mostly guaranteed within more general quality assurance schemes. Yet people’s decisions to not choose higher welfare products seems to be related to the perceptual disconnection between eating animal food products and the living producing animals. Respondents generally thought better information provision was required and the present level of provision was strongly criticized. In combination, the findings of both studies help inform the discussion about how citizens can be informed about animal welfare and the preferred content, source, and medium of such information. The paper also provides insights into citizens’ semantic interpretation of the concept of animal welfare (what wordings they use) and the range of relevance that animal welfare has for different groups that, in turn is useful in identifying which segments can be targeted. This can contribute to a more effective valorization of animal welfare as a product attribute.

A substantial number of studies has already investigated differences within the consumer market with regard to attitudes and perceptions in relation to farm animal welfare. Likewise, several studies focused on the gap that exists between positive attitudes and reported consumption or purchase intentions for sustainable food products in general and higher welfare products more specific, and on the factors influencing this attitude-behavior gap. Little or no studies, however, have started from reported pro-welfare behavior to distinguish between consumer groups and to explore the motivations of the respective behavior. With this study, we aim to group consumers according to their reported buying frequency of higher welfare eggs and higher welfare chicken meat. Similarities and dissimilarities between these groups are mapped in terms of individual characteristics, product attribute importance, perceived consumer effectiveness, perception of higher welfare products, and attitude toward a welfare label. The research methodology applied was a quantitative study with cross-sectional consumer survey data collected in Flanders in spring 2007 (n = 469). Pro-welfare behavior was unevenly distributed across different consumer segments, despite a general interest and concern for bird welfare. A consistent choice for standard (no welfare premium) poultry products was related to strong perceived price and availability barriers, to a low importance attached to ethical issues as product attributes, and to a low perceived consumer effectiveness. A consistent choice for products with higher welfare standards to the contrast associated with a high importance attached to ethical issues; a low effect of price and availability perception; a strong association of higher welfare products with product attributes like health, taste, and quality; and a high perceived consumer effectiveness. The identification of market segments with common characteristics is essential for positioning higher welfare products and developing effective communication strategies. Finally, a welfare label emerged as an appropriate communication vehicle for consumers who engage in pro-welfare behavior and who experienced the label as a solution to lower the search costs for higher welfare products.

Farm animal welfare has become increasingly important and relevant from the societal point of view throughout the livestock production chain, with space allowance for farm animals being one of its most topical and vividly debated sub-matters. Anticipating on the increasing power of the citizens' voice in Western society, this study focuses on societal concerns related to space allowance in Flemish animal production. This paper reports a quantitative analysis of cross-sectional surveys conducted among citizens of Flanders during 2000–2002 (n = 521) and during 2006 (n = 459). Compared with other animal welfare aspects, the survey participants perceived stocking densities and pen sizes as very essential for attaining an acceptable level of farm animal welfare. In addition, they evaluated stocking densities and pen sizes in current Flemish animal production as inadequate. Combined these results indicate that societal concern, defined as the difference between perceived importance and evaluative belief, is very high for stocking density and pen size, though less for group size. Societal concern about stocking density was found to be higher among younger people and households without children, while societal concern was not significantly associated with living environment (rural versus urban). Gender (higher concern among women in dataset 2006) and educational (higher concern among higher educated people in dataset 2000–2002) differences were not consistently significant in all datasets. The findings from this study suggest that larger gains in terms of animal welfare image among the public can be realised from providing farm animals with more space relative to reducing animal group size.

[EN] Stocking density is a prominent issue in public debates on farm animal welfare. Public perceptions and economic impact of reduced stocking density should be considered, along with effects on animal performances and welfare. In this paper, experimental data and accountancy data based on 15 Belgian farms were combined to calculate the financial impact of different stocking densities on broiler rabbit farm profitability. Using the partial budget technique, only those elements that change with stocking density were taken into account. From the experiment, feed conversion and feed intake were found to increase slightly though significantly with decreasing stocking density, although only 5% and 6% of the variation, respectively, were explained by stocking density. However, reducing stocking density implies a recalculation of all costs in a reduced number of broiler rabbits, which has a negative impact on farm profitability. Reducing stocking density from the standard situation of 15 rabbits per m² to 10 rabbits per m² reduced added value by 22 euros per doe. In general, farm income was low and amounted to only 28.10 euros per doe during 2006-2008 for the reference situation of 15 rabbits per m². Below a density of 9 rabbits/m², a negative farm income was calculated. Sensitivity analysis showed that rabbit meat price has a stronger influence on the added value at a given density than rabbit feed price., This research is funded by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT Vlaanderen), Brussels, Belgium. We gratefully acknowledge the Flemish Association of Poultry and Rabbit Breeders, and especially Ilka Hertogs for their willingness to provide the used accountancy data.

Pork consumers know little about boar taint and the methods used to avoid it. As such, relevant information is necessary to assist consumers to judge the acceptability of different strategies to avoid boar taint. The effect of basic (T1) or extensive (T2) written information or T2 with supplementary audio–visual information (AV) on the opinion concerning immunocastration (IC), raising entire male pigs (EM) and surgical castration with anaesthesia (SA) as compared to castration without anaesthesia (SC) was investigated in a student population. Overall, IC was significantly preferred over SC. The information condition influenced the preference for IC and EM as compared to SC. Participants exposed to AV were more positive to IC than participants exposed to T1 and T2, and more positive to EM than participants exposed to T2. The impact of information condition was not affected by gender, farming experience, knowledge about the boar taint issue or personal relevance of pig welfare. Potential effects of providing background information and media campaigns on public surveys ought to be considered. Supplementary audio–visual information increased the impact of information provisioning.