Before adding a steak or a carton of eggs to their shopping carts, more people — especially if they’re millennials — are considering the welfare of the farm animals that produce the food.
Before adding a steak or a carton of eggs to their shopping carts, more people — especially if they’re millennials — are considering the welfare of the farm animals that produce the food.
Compared to a generation ago, a trip to the grocery store comes with a load more questions, but not necessarily the right answers. "What consumers don’t know about food animal production and animal welfare is almost everything," says Dr. Michael von Massow, PhD, an associate professor in the Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics department at the University of Guelph. "Only 25 per cent of Canadians can answer correctly that a cow has to have a calf before she gives milk. When we ask people, they admit their knowledge of animal production is pretty limited."
von Massow, who has completed a survey of Canadian consumers, talked about the results at the recent International Symposium on Beef Cattle Welfare, hosted by the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM).
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Image via University of Calgary.
