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Farmers' Uptake of Animal Health and Welfare Technological Innovations. Implications for Animal Health Policies.

ABSTRACT: The paper analyses the uptake of animal health and welfare technologies by livestock farmers focusing on the identification of different behavioral patterns occurring in subpopulations of farmers and the assessment of the effect socio-economic and attitudinal factors have on these patterns. The technologies of interest include new genomic technologies, animal electronic identification (EID) for farm management, cattle surveillance, welfare qualitative behavioral assessment, anaerobic digestion, pedometers or activity monitors to detect oestrus and increase fertility/conception, and webcams/smart phones/tablets for animal husbandry. We use latent class analysis modeling and cross-section survey data to construct typologies of farmers based on technological uptake and heterogeneous characteristics. Our results suggest that, while three fifths of the farmers are "non-adopters," a third is classified as "current adopters" of animal EID for farm management, and a twelfth as "future adopters" of either or more types of animal health and welfare technologies. Age, agricultural income, perceived difficulty to invest in new technologies, agri-environmental scheme membership, and frequency of access to information on animal EID for farm management and cattle surveillance through British Cattle Movement Service, are significant predictors of typology membership. The findings are policy relevant as they give quantitative evidence on the factors influencing technological uptake and, as such, help identify the most likely adopters and optimize the cost of targeting them. As information access was found to be among the factors influencing multiple technology adoption, policy instruments should include the provision of training as regards the implementation of technologies and their combined impact on farm. Farmers' adoption of interrelated innovations suggests the need to coordinate individual policies aimed at encouraging uptake of different technologies. As shown here, this would concern not only synchronizing animal health and welfare policies, but also their interaction with others such as agri-environmental ones. Moreover, the results show that animal health policies requiring regulatory compliance may lead to voluntary uptake of additional or complementary technologies which relate to not just meeting but exceeding standards of animal welfare and health practices.

SUBMITTER: Liu J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6879451 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Farmers' Uptake of Animal Health and Welfare Technological Innovations. Implications for Animal Health Policies.

Liu Jiayi J Toma Luiza L Barnes Andrew P AP Stott Alistair A

Frontiers in veterinary science 20191120

The paper analyses the uptake of animal health and welfare technologies by livestock farmers focusing on the identification of different behavioral patterns occurring in subpopulations of farmers and the assessment of the effect socio-economic and attitudinal factors have on these patterns. The technologies of interest include new genomic technologies, animal electronic identification (EID) for farm management, cattle surveillance, welfare qualitative behavioral assessment, anaerobic digestion, ...[more]

PMID: 31824968

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Project description:The Animal Welfare Center (AWC) in Macedonia was established in 2009. The objectives of the center are animal welfare (AW) education, research, raising public awareness of AW, and increasing cooperation between the stakeholders. One Health (OH) was not the major focus of the AWC work initially, but, rather, a focus that evolved recently. The objective of this study was to evaluate the AWC from the OH perspective as an example case for positioning the AW within the overall OH concept. Three types of evaluation were performed: (1) assessment of OH-ness, by quantitative measurement of the operational and infrastructural aspects of the AWC; (2) impact evaluation, by conducting quantitative surveys on stakeholders and students; and (3) transdisciplinary evaluation, using semi-quantitative evaluation of the links of cooperation between the AWC and the stakeholders in society by the custom designed CACA (Cooperation, Activities, Communication, and Agreement) scoring system. Results for the OH-ness of the AWC showed relatively high scores for OH thinking, planning and working and middle scores for OH learning and sharing dimensions, i.e., dominance of the operational over infrastructural aspects of the AWC. The impact evaluation of the AWC shows that familiarity with the OH concept among stakeholders was low (44% of the respondents). However, there was a commonality among stakeholder's interest about AW and OH. According to the stakeholders' and students' opinions, the influence of AW on Animal, Environmental, and Human Health is relatively high (in the upper third of the 1-10 scale). The transdisciplinary evaluation of the AWC indicated the presence of transdisciplinarity work by the AWC, with a higher focus on the Universities and Research Institutions and some governmental institutions, and less linked with the Non-Governmental Organizations and Professional Associations (Chambers), e.g., the Veterinary Chamber in Macedonia. The evaluations conducted indicated that the AWC's work is closely dedicated to improving animal, environmental, and human health and has a considerable OH role among the stakeholders in the society. This study describes the significant role and importance that AW has in OH.

Project description:Consumers, industrial stakeholders, and the legislature demand a stronger focus on animal welfare of all livestock at the farm level by using suitable indicators in self-assessments. In order to deduce farms' animal welfare status reliably, factors that influence indicators' results need to be identified. Hence, this study aimed to apply possible animal welfare indicators for unweaned dairy calves on conventional dairy farms with early cow-calf separation and evaluate influencing factors such as age and sex of calves or climatic conditions on the applied indicators' results. An animal welfare assessment using 7 resource-based and 14 animal-based indicators was conducted at 42 typical Western German dairy farms (844 calves) in 2018 and 2019 by two observers. The effect of influencing factors was calculated by binary and ordinal logistic regressions and expressed as odds ratios. Although every unweaned calf was assessed during the farm visits, most farms had relatively few unweaned calves (average number of calves ± standard deviation = 20.1 ± 6.7 calves), with six farms having not more than 10 calves. The small sample sizes question the usage of those indicators to compare between farms and to set thresholds at the farm level. Only one assessed indicator (cleanliness core body) was not statistically affected by the evaluated influencing factors. Calf age was identified as the most decisive factor, as it affected 16 of 21 evaluated indicators, and calf age distribution on-farm varied greatly. Climatic conditions (ambient temperature and rainfall) influenced resource-based indicators such as access to concentrate and water or the cleanliness of feeding implements and bedding as well as animal-based cleanliness indicators and the occurrence of health-related impairments such as coughing and diarrhea. The authors found differences between calves on farms assessed by the different observers not only in resource-based hygiene indicators but also in animal-based indicators such as hyperthermia or hypothermia, highlighting the need for further evaluation of quality criteria in dairy calf welfare assessments. Nevertheless, animal welfare assessments by farmers themselves could be useful tools to sensitize farmers to animal welfare and thereby improve calves' welfare.

Project description:Introduction Health sector management is increasingly complex as new health technologies, treatments, and innovative service delivery strategies are developed. Many of these innovations are implemented prematurely, or fail to be implemented at scale, resulting in substantial wasted resources. Methods A scoping review was conducted to identify articles that described the scale up process conceptually or that described an instance in which a healthcare innovation was scaled up. We define scale up as the expansion and extension of delivery or access to an innovation for all end users in a jurisdiction who will benefit from it. Results Sixty nine articles were eligible for review. Frequently described stages in the innovation process and contextual issues that influence progress through each stage were mapped. 16 stages were identified: 12 deliberation and 4 action stages. Included papers suggest that innovations progress through stages of maturity and the uptake of innovation depends on the innovation aligning with the interests of 3 critical stakeholder groups (innovators, end users and the decision makers) and is also influenced by 3 broader contexts (social and physical environment, the health system, and the regulatory, political and economic environment). The 16 stages form the rows of the Nose to Tail Tool (NTT) grid and the 6 contingency factors form columns. The resulting stage-by-issue grid consists of 72 cells, each populated with cell-specific questions, prompts and considerations from the reviewed literature. Conclusion We offer a tool that helps stakeholders identify the stage of maturity of their innovation, helps facilitate deliberative discussions on the key considerations for each major stakeholder group and the major contextual barriers that the innovation faces. We believe the NTT will help to identify potential problems that the innovation will face and facilitates early modification, before large investments are made in a potentially flawed solution.

Dataset Information

Farmers' Uptake of Animal Health and Welfare Technological Innovations. Implications for Animal Health Policies.

Publications

Farmers' Uptake of Animal Health and Welfare Technological Innovations. Implications for Animal Health Policies.

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