Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

RAHMANN G & GODINHO D (Ed.) (2012): Tackling the Future Challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry.
Proceedings of the 2 nd OAHC, Hamburg/Trenthorst, Germany, Sep 12-14, 2012
their opinions on these issues and the implementation of the alternatives in organic farming. Afterwards
four packages (80 g) of organic smoked salami were auctioned. The only difference between
the salamis was the method of castration used. Consumers were informed about the bidding mechanism
of a Vickrey auction and told that the “winner” had to buy the auctioned package. If participants
did not want to buy one of the salamis at all, they could place a bid of zero. The focus group
discussions were audio- and videotaped and transcribed verbatim. Qualitative content analysis following
Gläser and Laudel (2006) was applied. The auction data were analyzed using descriptive
statistics (SPSS 19).
89 consumers of organic pork participated in the study. 62 % of the participants were women and
50 % each were 18 to 44 or rather 45 to 75 years old. Most participants (80 %) were intensive consumers
of organic food.
Results
Perception of the alternatives
Participants strongly rejected castration without pain relief. The practice was contrary to their image
of animal friendly husbandry in organic farming. Altogether, knowledge and awareness of the issue
of piglet castration was low among participants. The criteria animal welfare, health/food safety,
taste, organic farming and costs were important for participants’ evaluation of the alternatives.
Animal welfare was particularly important for the evaluation of castration with anesthesia and analgesia
and fattening of boars. While castration with pain relief was predominantly considered as positive
with respect to animal welfare, opinions were divided with regard to fattening of boars as on
the one hand there is no pain due to surgical interventions and on the other hand there are possible
problems with increased aggressive behavior of the animals. Immunocastration was mainly seen as
positive for the pigs.
Food safety was a mayor issue with immunocastration and with castration with pain relief due to
suspected residues and negative health effects for consumers. Possible food safety risks of immunocastration
were seen as more severe than of castration with anesthesia and analgesia because immunocastration
was associated with hormones. In contrast, many participants regarded the risk of
residues of anesthetics and analgesics as low. The food safety issue dominated the discussion on
immunocastration and other criteria seemed less important in comparison.
The discussion on taste focused on boar meat. This criterion did not play a role for the other alternatives.
The discussion was characterized by great uncertainty regarding odor and flavor of boar taint
and the use of tainted meat. With exception of a few persons, none of the participants had personally
experienced boar taint in meat before.
As regards organic farming the use of drugs for castration with anesthesia and analgesia as well as
for immunocastration was considered inappropriate. Fattening of boars was the only alternative
deemed explicitly as suitable for organic farming due to its supposed naturalness.
Costs of castration with pain relief and fattening of boars were regarded as supposedly high and
increased meat prices for consumers were feared. In this context, some participants criticized the
sorting out of tainted carcasses without an appropriate use as wastefulness which not only presents
an economical but also an ethical problem.
Willingness-to-pay for the alternatives
The results of the Vickrey-Auctions reflected the previous discussions. Table 1 shows the average
willingness-to-pay for the different methods and the corresponding share of zero-bids. Average
willingness-to-pay for castration with anesthesia and analgesia was highest with 2.17 € for 80 g of
salami and the share of zero-bids was lowest. Considering the focus group results, it can be assumed
that consumers preferred this alternative because of the improved animal welfare and the
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