Farmer’s Response to Societal Concerns About Farm Animal Welfare: The Case of Mulesing

Abstract

The study explored the motivations behind Australian wool producers' intentions regarding mulesing; a surgical procedure that will be voluntarily phased out after 2010, following retailer boycotts led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Telephone interviews were conducted with 22 West Australian wool producers and consultants to elicit their behavioral, normative and control beliefs about mulesing and alternative methods of breech strike prevention. Results indicate that approximately half the interviewees intend to continue mulesing, despite attitudes toward the act of mulesing being quite negative. This indicates that attitudes alone are unlikely to be good predictors of this goal directed behavior. Most respondents believed mulesing was more effective and involved less cost, time, and effort than the currently available alternatives to prevent breech strike. Further, they felt relatively little social pressure, as they believed few consumers were concerned about mulesing. However, they noted that if consumer sentiment changed they would likely change their practices. Thus, attitudes are likely to be only one of several factors influencing intentions to change farm practices to address societal concerns about animal welfare. Further, mulesing appears to be goal-directed behavior, suggesting that other factors depicted by the Model of Goal-directed Behavior (MGB; Perugini and Bagozzi In: Br J Soc Psychol, 40: 79-98, 2001) may be worth exploring in this context. Finally, these results provide insight into how policy makers may influence farmers to change practices in response to societal pressure for improving farm animal welfare.

Attitudes of Canadian Pig Producers Toward Animal Welfare

“…Taildocking, on the other hand, was regarded as preventing greater welfare problems from tail-biting; thus it may have been seen as necessary and the ''lesser of two evils'' (cf. Wells et al 2011). In the same vein, one participant supported the once-routine practice of tooth-clipping newborns to prevent painful facial lacerations.…”

“…Like other food-animal producers (Vanhonacker et al 2008;Phillips et al 2009;Wells et al 2011;Spooner et al 2012), participants generally accepted some invasive management practices as unavoidable. Castration was described as a consumer-driven necessity to avoid boar-tainted meat.…”

Modelling Farm Animal Welfare

“…Other conceptual modelling studies have considered the impacts of farmers’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviour on their choice of whether to implement welfare improvements [ 146 ], a matter which has generally been overlooked in other models of animal welfare. Other researchers have applied a conceptual socio-psychological model (the “theory of planned behaviour”) to understand farmers’ decisions, and underlying motivations, to change husbandry practices, such as group housing for pregnant sows [ 147 ], alternatives to mulesing in sheep [ 148 ], and to identify interventions that might encourage farmers to implement such changes [ 147 ].…”

New skills, networks and challenges: the changing face of animal production science in Australia

“…The integration of social scientists into livestock research projects is used at both ends of the research and development pathway, including to explore and address community perceptions of livestock production systems and technologies, as well as farmer decisions to adopt these. Wells et al (2011), for example, explored the motivations behind Australian wool producers' intentions regarding mulesing, and concluded that farmers' intentions to stop or continue mulesing was affected by their perception of social pressure to discontinue mulesing and their ability to implement effective alternatives. In this scenario, the role of the traditional animal scientist addresses only one part of the farmers' decision to change their mulesing practices (i.e.…”