Adrian Evans and Mara Miele
Within Welfare Quality we carried out in-depth focus group research on consumers’ perceptions and expectations of the animal friendliness of the products that they normally buy, their interpretation of what counts as animal welfare and the types of information they would like to receive in order to make more informed food choices. This research was carried out in seven European countries: Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, UK, France and Norway.
Our research into why European consumers do not buy more animal friendly produced products revealed considerable differences across EU countries in consumers’ attitudes towards shopping for such goods as well as some common elements. Despite the fact that recent surveys (Eurobarometer 2005, 2006) indicate that an overwhelming majority of European citizens are concerned about the welfare of farm animals, our findings indicate that:
1)  Many European consumers are concerned but not worried about farm animal welfare, and that they believe that they are already buying animal friendly or ethically acceptable products.
2)  A sizeable number of the participants in our focus group discussions did not think there was a need to ‘vote’ at the supermarket to improve the quality of life of farm animals but, rather, they attributed the responsibility for farm animal welfare to public institutions or supply chain actors, such as producers and retailers, who they also believed should guarantee that products with low animal welfare standards should not be present in the market.
3)  In all seven study countries consumers’ knowledge about farm animal welfare was highly interconnected with their concerns for food safety and quality. Moreover animal friendliness was strongly associated with organic, free-range and small-scale production while animal un-friendliness was associated with intensive animal farming.
The results will be published in 2007 as Welfare Quality Report Series, No 5. Read more

Mara Miele, mielem@cardiff.ac.uk and Adrian Evans, evansa18@cardiff.ac.uk