Animal Welfare
"One of the things we need to continue to explore is the use of gas blends, where gases besides Co2 may be more inert for the animal." - Kurt Vogel, the Kraft/Oscar Mayer faculty scholar at the Univ. Of Wisconsin-River Falls.
 


Bridging Perception Gaps

One of the biggest challenges is not related to science, equipment or procedures. There is growing recognition that the social conversation around animal welfare is also a prominent challenge.

Purdue’s Croney sums it up: “Part of our challenge is not just the science, its understanding what the public is concerned about and why they are concerned about it.”


Charlie Arnot is CEO of The Center for Food Integrity, a company dedicated to building consumer trust and confidence in today’s food system. Their research shows that “Communicating shared values is three to five times more important than communicating data in building trust. The question that people are asking today is really about ethics and values, not about data, and not about science.

“What we know from our consumer research,” he says, “is that the vast majority of Americans want to eat meat, milk and eggs as long as they know the animals were treated humanely. We also know that most Americans don’t believe that the animals are treated humanely in the US food system.”

And therein lies the perception issue. “It’s that gap between those two that creates the real challenge for us in meat and agriculture, and an opportunity for those who are looking to drive change in the industry.

“So we have to change our approach, we have to understand it’s a requirement for us to communicate very differently to be successful.”

Arnot says there has to be a change in the way communication flows.

“The former communication model in agriculture used to be ‘We’re going to rely upon our associations or on one single source of information to drive consumer understanding or consumer perception.’”

Not so anymore. “The key,” Arnot says, “is everybody has to be part of that conversation. There isn’t anybody whose voice is not important. Anybody who’s involved in agriculture and animal agriculture has an obligation to be part of the conversation.”

Noting the new model for communication, Arnot summarizes, “There isn’t any silver bullet, there isn’t any single oracle that people are going to be able to go to for information. It’s going to be a variety of different sources having conversations in a lot of different places that will ultimately be persuasive.”

Thaxton, for her part, is determined to be part of the solution. “I retired Dec. 31, and I’ve decided that I will devote the next several years to find ways to get the word out. We’ve got people like Charlie Arnot feeding us the information we need. We just need to execute it in a way that’s effective.”

Most stakeholders agree: Recognizing that challenge is a big step toward the solution.