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Exploring Attitudes toward Animal Welfare through the Lens of Subjectivity-An Application of Q-Methodology.

ABSTRACT: Opinions increasingly influence legislative processes. The case of animal welfare (AW) standards is a clear example of the role played by opinions in political decisions. The issue, to which European citizens have historically been sensitive, has been the subject of numerous consultations and investigations, aimed at considering citizens' opinions regarding breeding conditions. However, these tools and in particular standard surveys, suffer from response biases such as the prejudices involved in the design of questions and the interpretation of the results. To mitigate these problems, we used the Q-methodology, which is an inductive but systematic methodology focused on patterns that explain the ideas of individuals. The purposive sample consisted of 36 veterinary students who were acquiring scientific knowledge about AW. The results, in addition to providing policymakers with food for thought for the further development of AW standards, contribute to testing the use of alternative methodologies to collect citizens' views. This mapping of viewpoints helps to build a more effective form of AW policy making.

SUBMITTER: Vecchio Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7460027 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Exploring Attitudes toward Animal Welfare through the Lens of Subjectivity-An Application of Q-Methodology.

Vecchio Yari Y Pauselli Gregorio G Adinolfi Felice F

Animals : an open access journal from MDPI 20200806 8

Opinions increasingly influence legislative processes. The case of animal welfare (AW) standards is a clear example of the role played by opinions in political decisions. The issue, to which European citizens have historically been sensitive, has been the subject of numerous consultations and investigations, aimed at considering citizens' opinions regarding breeding conditions. However, these tools and in particular standard surveys, suffer from response biases such as the prejudices involved in ...[more]

PMID: 32781735

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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:BACKGROUND:Male piglets are surgically castrated at a young age primarily to prevent pork meat from being tainted with boar taint, an offensive taste and odor that can be present in uncastrated male pigs. The practice of surgical castration is considered to be both stressful and painful for the piglets, and is therefore under scrutiny due to animal welfare concerns. Rearing of intact males or vaccination against boar taint (immunocastration) are two potential alternatives to surgical castration, but in order to successfully implement either of these alternatives, consumer acceptance of the different methods must be taken into consideration as it will be central for future sales of pork products. A consumer survey mapping Norwegian consumers' attitudes toward piglet castration was conducted to explore whether the consumers' position regarding castration has changed since an almost identical study was completed in 2008. RESULTS:The internet-based survey found that Norwegian consumers are comfortable with the current practice of surgical castration with anesthesia, but also that they are open to the alternative method of vaccination against boar taint. When provided additional information stating that vaccination against boar taint may not be able to reduce boar taint to the levels that castration with anesthesia does, consumer skepticism towards vaccination increased. When evaluating castration methods, animal welfare was the most important influencing factor. Since the original survey from 2008, animal welfare was also the single factor that has increased the most among a set of assessment criteria when purchasing pork products. CONCLUSION:Norwegian consumers regard animal welfare as an important factor both when purchasing pork products and when evaluating different methods of castration, and animal welfare as a factor has increased in importance since the initial survey in 2008. Although the current practice of castration using local anesthesia is still widely accepted among consumers, the acceptance of today's method has declined since the original survey in 2008.

Dataset Information

Exploring Attitudes toward Animal Welfare through the Lens of Subjectivity-An Application of Q-Methodology.

Publications

Exploring Attitudes toward Animal Welfare through the Lens of Subjectivity-An Application of Q-Methodology.

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