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Consumer Attitudes Towards Alternatives to Piglet Castration Without Pain Relief in Organic Farming: Qualitative Results from Germany

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Abstract

In order to avoid the occurrence of boar taint, castration of piglets without pain relief is a common practice in pork production. Due to increasing animal welfare concerns, the practice will be banned in organic agriculture from 2012 and alternative methods will have to be implemented. An important factor for the successful implementation of such alternatives is consumers’ acceptance of the methods, as consumers’ daily buying decisions are crucial to the further development of the organic pork sector. Thus, this paper explores organic consumers’ attitudes towards piglet castration without pain relief and three alternative methods and examines which aspects of these alternatives are important to consumers of organic products. The analysis of nine focus group discussions in Germany conducted in fall 2009 and involving a total of 89 participants, shows that castration without pain relief in organic farming was unacceptable for participants. Animal welfare, food safety, taste, and costs were principal aspects that participants used to assess the three alternatives. Participants had mainly favorable attitudes towards castration with anesthesia and analgesia. Although participants had some concerns regarding the fattening of boars (taste), there was openness towards this alternative due to its perceived naturalness. Immunocastration was seen quite critically because participants feared that this alternative might lead to (hormone) residues in meat. Overall, the results suggest that fattening of boars and castration with anesthesia and analgesia could be acceptable alternatives to consumers of organic pork.

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Notes

  1. The question “Have you ever heard that male pigs are castrated for fattening?” (Answers: yes or no) was only added to the questionnaire after the first focus group discussion had been conducted, in order to obtain information from each participant, which turned out to be difficult in the course of the focus group discussions.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding of the study by the Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung (BLE) within the framework of the Federal program for organic agriculture and other forms of sustainable agriculture (BÖLN). We would particularly like to thank Ute Knierim and Christine Brenninkmeyer (University of Kassel, Group of Farm Animal Behaviour and Husbandry) for preparing the consumer information about piglet castration and its alternatives. We are grateful to Anne-Marie Sherwood (Aberystwyth, UK) for copy-editing and proofreading this paper. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable and helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural and Food Marketing, University of Kassel, Steinstraße 19, 37213, Witzenhausen, Germany

    Astrid Heid & Ulrich Hamm

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  1. Astrid Heid
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  2. Ulrich Hamm
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Correspondence to Astrid Heid.

Appendix

Appendix

Information provided to the participants: There were three variants of the information. Variant 1 (minimal information) included short descriptions of the methods. For variant 2 (full information) and 3 (full information incl. “hormone”) pros and cons of each method were added. Additionally, the word “hormone” was used in variant 3 while this was avoided in the other variants. The information was provided in form of a standardized text, which was read out by the moderator (see Table 3). The presentation was accompanied by slides (Power Point) with the main statements. Additionally, a short version of the description of each method and the pros and cons (if applicable) were given to the participants on a handout.

Table 3 Information on piglet castration as read out by the moderator (all three variants)
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Heid, A., Hamm, U. Consumer Attitudes Towards Alternatives to Piglet Castration Without Pain Relief in Organic Farming: Qualitative Results from Germany. J Agric Environ Ethics 25, 687–706 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-011-9350-2

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