Quantifying the Valuation of Animal Welfare Among Americans

AbstractThere is public support in the United States and Europe for accounting for animal welfare in national policies on food and agriculture. Although an emerging body of research has measured animals ’ capacity to suffer, there has been no specific attempt to analyze how this information is interpreted by the public or how exactly it should be reflected in policy. The aim of this study was to quantify Americans’ preferences about farming methods and the suffering they impose on different spe cies to generate a metric for weighing the trade-offs between different approaches of promoting animal welfare. A survey of 502 residents of the United States was implemented using the online platform Mechanical Turk. Using respondent data, we developed the species-adjusted measure of suffering-year s (SAMYs), an analogue of the disability-adjusted life year, to calculate the suffering endured under different farming conditions by cattle, pigs, and chickens, the three most commonly consumed animals. Nearly one-third (30%) of respondents reported that they believed animal suffering should be tak en into account to a degree equal to or above human suffering. The 2016 suffering burden in the United States according to two tested conditions (poor genetics and cramped confinement) was approximately 66 million SAMYs for pigs, 156 million SAMYs for cattle, and 1.3 billion SAMYs for chickens. Thi s calculation lends early guidance for efforts to reduce animal suffering, demonstrating that...
Source: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research