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Attitudes of Swiss consumers towards meat from entire or immunocastrated boars: A representative survey
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Research in Veterinary Science 85 (2008) 625–627 www.elsevier.com/locate/rvsc
Attitudes of Swiss consumers towards meat from entire or immunocastrated boars: A representative survey B. Huber-Eicher *, P. Spring Swiss College of Agriculture SHL, University of Applied Sciences, La¨nggasse 85, 3052 Zollikofen, Switzerland Accepted 4 March 2008
Abstract Male piglets are castrated in order to prevent boar taint in pork. The surgical intervention is currently done without anaesthesia. Growing public concern about the welfare issue of this procedure forces the meat industry to evaluate alternative methods. The acceptance of such methods was studied in Switzerland within a large representative survey on the image of Swiss meat. Five questions were aimed at our subject. It was found that only a small part of the population has actually experienced boar taint. Nevertheless, the majority would not buy products made from tainted meat even if the absence of any perceivable boar taint and identical quality with current products could be guaranteed. The acceptance of meat from immunocastrated animals was low. Among the proposed four alternative methods, the production of entire males (with two options regarding processing of the tainted meat), immunocastration and castration with anaesthesia, only the last one seems to be acceptable to the interviewees. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Boar taint; Castration; Immunocastration; Anaesthesia; Survey; Consumer attitudes
In most countries, rearing male pigs are still castrated at an early age in order to prevent the development of boar taint. Such ‘‘tainted” meat is suitable for consumption without restriction but most consumers consider the taste and smell repellent. Castration is usually done without anaesthesia which is unsatisfactory in terms of the animal welfare issue. Growing concerns of consumers are putting more and more pressure on the pig industry to abandon this practise. In Switzerland, it will be banned by 2009. In the Netherlands, large retail companies will stop selling meat from pigs not analgised for castration in the same year. In Norway, the castration of piglets is to be performed exclusively by veterinarians and under anaesthesia. Surgical castration will be banned completely in 2009. Pig industries in EU-countries are now sensitised for the development of alternative methods which do not cause animal *
Corresponding author. Tel.: +41 (0) 31 910 21 11; fax: +41 (0) 910 22
99. E-mail address: [email protected] (B. Huber-Eicher). 0034-5288/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.rvsc.2008.03.002
welfare concerns. Today, there are three important options, each with its specific pros and cons: Castration with anaesthesia, no castration (fattening entire boars) and immunocastration which involves active immunization against the gonadotropin-releasing hormone. There is a growing number of studies on these alternative methods, most of them focusing on production and animal welfare aspects (for a review see Prunier et al., 2006). However, whether a method is applicable will also strongly depend on a positive reception by the consumers. Few studies were published on this topic (e.g. Lundstro¨m et al., 1982). Since the perception of boar taint as well as the sensibility for animal welfare issues varies between countries (Dijksterhuis et al., 2000; Bonneau, 1998), it is evident for a national pig industry to know about the attitudes of their consumers towards different methods of pork meat production. Therefore, the present study was conducted in order to evaluate the attitudes of Swiss consumers regarding different methods of rearing male pigs alternative to castration without analgesia.
626
B. Huber-Eicher, P. Spring / Research in Veterinary Science 85 (2008) 625–627
Proviande, the most important representative of the Swiss meat industry, conducted a general survey on the image of Swiss meat in 2006. It consisted of 35 questions. At the end of the questionnaire, five questions were added addressing alternatives to the castration without anaesthesia. The survey was conducted by means of face-to-face interviews lasting about 30 min. Eight hundred people were chosen as a representative sample with respect to origin, sex, age and living in a rural or urban area. The five questions relevant to our subject are listed in Table 1. Differences between the frequencies of answers were analysed with chi-square-test (a = 5%). Questions 1 and 2: A rather small portion of the population (16.4%) had consciously experienced boar taint before. One third among them reduced their consumption of pork as a consequence of this experience. Almost two-third (63.1%) of the population would not buy products like salami, smoked sausages or ham made of tainted meat, even so it could be guaranteed that boar taint is completely eliminated and that the quality is identical to current products. Questions 3 and 4: The term ‘‘immunocastration” was scarcely (10.5%) associated with ‘‘hormones”, a very negative term in conjunction with meat quality. ‘‘Vaccination” was associated by 20.8%, all others had no clear association with the term. After a brief oral information on immunocastration provided by the interviewer (Table 1), 26.7% of the interviewees stated that they would buy meat produced by means of this method, 17.3% would buy it, but only with concern and 56.0% would not buy it. The answers to question 4 are at least partly influenced by the phrasing of the provided information. With a more detailed explanaTable 1 Analysed questions No.
Question
1a 1b
Have you ever consciously experienced boar taint? If yes: in which country last and did this experience influence your consumption of pork? Would you buy products like salami, smoked sausages or ham made of tainted meat, when it could be guaranteed that boar taint is completely eliminated and that quality is identical to current products? Which term do you associate spontaneously with the word ‘‘immunocastration”? The following text was read to the interviewee before asking question 4: Immunocastration is a vaccination. The used vaccine is hormonal not active and entirely disintegrated within the pig. It stimulates, like any other vaccine, the immune system to produce specific antibodies. These antibodies inhibit temporally sexual maturity and thus the production of boar taint Would you buy meat produced in such a way? To what extend would you agree with the following methods? (i) No castration, sort out meat with boar taint and produce specific boar-products (ii) No castration, sort out meat with boar taint and destroy it (iii) Castrate boars with anaesthesia (iv) Inhibit the production of boar taint by vaccination (immunocastration)
2
3 Input:
4 5
tion, we might have found an increased number of favourable answers. Question 5: We asked for the amount of approval to a different alternative method of producing pork without the usual painful castration. On the scale from ‘‘disagree strongly”, ‘‘disagree”, ‘‘indifferent”, ‘‘agree” and ‘‘agree strongly” the latter two categories were never selected. This might indicate an artefact. We made sure that the interviewers had correctly posed the questions and that the interviewees knew about all the categories. We can therefore exclude an ascertainment error. The high portion of ‘‘indifferent” (82.4%, 52.8%, 59.8% and 57.6% for option i to iv, respectively) may indicate that the comprehension of the proposed methods was insufficient. Moreover, categorical rejection or indifference is a common attitude of persons towards topics which are not completely conceived. It has to be noted, however, that the situation of incomplete comprehension might be typical for consumers who have to choose the pork produced by the methods listed in Table 1. Therefore, the results can be considered as meaningful reflecting the real world situation and are discussed in this context. The strongest disagreement (‘‘disagree” plus ‘‘disagree strongly”) was observed for ‘‘immunocastration” (47.2%). About the same extent of disagreement was found for ‘‘no castration, sort out meat with boar taint and destroy it” and ‘‘no castration, sort out meat with boar taint and produce specific boar-products” (42.4% and 40.2%, respectively). The lowest disagreement was clearly associated with the castration under anaesthesia (17.6%). This is the method most transparent to the consumer and it eliminates reliably the risk of boar taint. It is associated with the least changes to the current situation. Except for the anaesthesia, the whole value chain remains the same. A drawback of the method is the fact that a medical intervention is still necessary. The application of the anaesthesia itself may cause stress in the animal as well as the waking up from it. There are also indications of post-operative pain (Prunier et al., 2006). An other drawback is the additional cost of the anaesthesia, but this will vary greatly depending on whether producers will be allowed to apply it themselves or whether it remains the exclusive right of veterinaries. The stronger disagreement of Swiss consumers to the two alternatives without castration as compared to castration with anaesthesia corresponds well to the finding of Liljenstolpe (2003) who found that Swedish consumers valued the production of pork using castration with anaesthesia significantly higher than the production without castration. However, the strong disagreement to immunocastration found in Switzerland contrasts the result of another Swedish study. Lagerkvist et al. (2006) found that Swedish consumers prefer meat from immunocastrated male pigs to meat from surgically castrated (without anaesthesia) ones and such meat to meat from non-castrated boars. The available dataset allowed for an additional analysis of correlations between characteristics of the interviewees and their responses. In detail, we looked at the type of area
B. Huber-Eicher, P. Spring / Research in Veterinary Science 85 (2008) 625–627
627
Table 2 Effect of ‘‘origin” (German part/French part of Switzerland) and sex on the answers to questions 1b, 2, 4 and 5 Question
German part
No.
Answer
1b 2
The experience with boar taint had an influence on my consumption of pig meat I would not buy products made of tainted meat, even when it could be guaranteed that the boar taint is completely eliminated by processing I would not buy meat from immunocastrated pigs I disagree with immunocastration as an alternative method
4 5
French part
Female
Male
33.0% 63.2%
> >
25.0%* 63.0%n.s.
40.0% 67.9%
> >
22.7%* 58.0%*
58.8% 52.8%
> >
47.5%* 30.5%*
60.5% 51.7%
> >
51.2%* 42.5%*
n.s. *
P > 0.05. Significant proportion at a = 5%.
people live in (rural or urban), age (four categories), origin (French or German part of Switzerland) and sex. The fact that people live in a rural or an urban environment did not influence their answers. Age had an effect in respect to question one: Persons over 60 years had significantly more often experienced boar taint and persons younger than 30 significantly less than the remaining part of the population. The origin of the interviewees had an effect on the answers to questions 1b, 4 and 5, their sex on the answers to questions 1b, 2, 4 and 5 (Table 2). People from the German part of Switzerland reduced the consumption of pork to a higher extent after the experience of boar taint. They were more dismissive towards buying meat from immunocastrated animals and showed a significantly higher disagreement for immunocastration as an alternative method. The same applies for female interviewees when compared to males. Additionally, females showed a stronger dislike for products made of tainted meat but guaranteed without perceivable boar taint. The observed differences in the perception of boar taint and the acceptance of alternatives between German and French parts of Switzerland and between males and females comply well with the results obtained in countries of the European Union. This important issue will have to be considered by the meat industry when promoting a method for the production of pig meat alternative to the current castration without anaesthesia in the year 2009.
This study is part of the project ‘‘ProSchwein”, initiated and supported by the pork industry, the government and two large retail companies. References Bonneau, M., 1998. Use of entire males for pig meat in the European Union. Meat Sci. 49 (Suppl. 1), 257–272. Dijksterhuis, G.B., Engel, B., Walstra, P., Furnols, M.F.I., Agerhem, H., Fischer, K., Oliver, M.A., Claudi-Magnussen, C., Siret, F., Beague, M.P., Homer, D.B., Bonneau, M., 2000. An international study on the importance of androstenone and skatole for boar taint: II. Sensory evaluation by trained panels in seven European countries. Meat Sci. 54 (3), 261–269. Lagerkvist, C.J., Carlsson, F., Viske, D., 2006. Swedish consumer preferences for animal welfare and biotech: a choice experiment. AgBioForum 9 (1), 51–58. Liljenstolpe, C., 2003. Valuing farm animal welfare: measuring consumer response with choice experiments (working paper). Uppsala: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Economics (cited in Lagerkvist, C.J., Carlsson, F., Viske, D., 2006). Lundstro¨m, K., Malmfors, B., Fjelkner-Modig, S., Szatek, A., 1982. Consumer testing of boar meat in Sweden. Swedish J. Agric. Res. 13, 39–46. Prunier, A., Bonneau, M., von Borell, E.H., Cinotti, S., Gunn, M., Fredriksen, B., Giersing, M., Morton, D.B., Tuyttens, F.A.M., Velarde, A., 2006. A review of the welfare consequences of surgical castration in piglets and the evaluation of non-surgical methods. Anim. Welf. 15 (3), 277–289.
Research in Veterinary Science 85 (2008) 625–627 www.elsevier.com/locate/rvsc
Attitudes of Swiss consumers towards meat from entire or immunocastrated boars: A representative survey B. Huber-Eicher *, P. Spring Swiss College of Agriculture SHL, University of Applied Sciences, La¨nggasse 85, 3052 Zollikofen, Switzerland Accepted 4 March 2008
Abstract Male piglets are castrated in order to prevent boar taint in pork. The surgical intervention is currently done without anaesthesia. Growing public concern about the welfare issue of this procedure forces the meat industry to evaluate alternative methods. The acceptance of such methods was studied in Switzerland within a large representative survey on the image of Swiss meat. Five questions were aimed at our subject. It was found that only a small part of the population has actually experienced boar taint. Nevertheless, the majority would not buy products made from tainted meat even if the absence of any perceivable boar taint and identical quality with current products could be guaranteed. The acceptance of meat from immunocastrated animals was low. Among the proposed four alternative methods, the production of entire males (with two options regarding processing of the tainted meat), immunocastration and castration with anaesthesia, only the last one seems to be acceptable to the interviewees. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Boar taint; Castration; Immunocastration; Anaesthesia; Survey; Consumer attitudes
In most countries, rearing male pigs are still castrated at an early age in order to prevent the development of boar taint. Such ‘‘tainted” meat is suitable for consumption without restriction but most consumers consider the taste and smell repellent. Castration is usually done without anaesthesia which is unsatisfactory in terms of the animal welfare issue. Growing concerns of consumers are putting more and more pressure on the pig industry to abandon this practise. In Switzerland, it will be banned by 2009. In the Netherlands, large retail companies will stop selling meat from pigs not analgised for castration in the same year. In Norway, the castration of piglets is to be performed exclusively by veterinarians and under anaesthesia. Surgical castration will be banned completely in 2009. Pig industries in EU-countries are now sensitised for the development of alternative methods which do not cause animal *
Corresponding author. Tel.: +41 (0) 31 910 21 11; fax: +41 (0) 910 22
99. E-mail address: [email protected] (B. Huber-Eicher). 0034-5288/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.rvsc.2008.03.002
welfare concerns. Today, there are three important options, each with its specific pros and cons: Castration with anaesthesia, no castration (fattening entire boars) and immunocastration which involves active immunization against the gonadotropin-releasing hormone. There is a growing number of studies on these alternative methods, most of them focusing on production and animal welfare aspects (for a review see Prunier et al., 2006). However, whether a method is applicable will also strongly depend on a positive reception by the consumers. Few studies were published on this topic (e.g. Lundstro¨m et al., 1982). Since the perception of boar taint as well as the sensibility for animal welfare issues varies between countries (Dijksterhuis et al., 2000; Bonneau, 1998), it is evident for a national pig industry to know about the attitudes of their consumers towards different methods of pork meat production. Therefore, the present study was conducted in order to evaluate the attitudes of Swiss consumers regarding different methods of rearing male pigs alternative to castration without analgesia.
626
B. Huber-Eicher, P. Spring / Research in Veterinary Science 85 (2008) 625–627
Proviande, the most important representative of the Swiss meat industry, conducted a general survey on the image of Swiss meat in 2006. It consisted of 35 questions. At the end of the questionnaire, five questions were added addressing alternatives to the castration without anaesthesia. The survey was conducted by means of face-to-face interviews lasting about 30 min. Eight hundred people were chosen as a representative sample with respect to origin, sex, age and living in a rural or urban area. The five questions relevant to our subject are listed in Table 1. Differences between the frequencies of answers were analysed with chi-square-test (a = 5%). Questions 1 and 2: A rather small portion of the population (16.4%) had consciously experienced boar taint before. One third among them reduced their consumption of pork as a consequence of this experience. Almost two-third (63.1%) of the population would not buy products like salami, smoked sausages or ham made of tainted meat, even so it could be guaranteed that boar taint is completely eliminated and that the quality is identical to current products. Questions 3 and 4: The term ‘‘immunocastration” was scarcely (10.5%) associated with ‘‘hormones”, a very negative term in conjunction with meat quality. ‘‘Vaccination” was associated by 20.8%, all others had no clear association with the term. After a brief oral information on immunocastration provided by the interviewer (Table 1), 26.7% of the interviewees stated that they would buy meat produced by means of this method, 17.3% would buy it, but only with concern and 56.0% would not buy it. The answers to question 4 are at least partly influenced by the phrasing of the provided information. With a more detailed explanaTable 1 Analysed questions No.
Question
1a 1b
Have you ever consciously experienced boar taint? If yes: in which country last and did this experience influence your consumption of pork? Would you buy products like salami, smoked sausages or ham made of tainted meat, when it could be guaranteed that boar taint is completely eliminated and that quality is identical to current products? Which term do you associate spontaneously with the word ‘‘immunocastration”? The following text was read to the interviewee before asking question 4: Immunocastration is a vaccination. The used vaccine is hormonal not active and entirely disintegrated within the pig. It stimulates, like any other vaccine, the immune system to produce specific antibodies. These antibodies inhibit temporally sexual maturity and thus the production of boar taint Would you buy meat produced in such a way? To what extend would you agree with the following methods? (i) No castration, sort out meat with boar taint and produce specific boar-products (ii) No castration, sort out meat with boar taint and destroy it (iii) Castrate boars with anaesthesia (iv) Inhibit the production of boar taint by vaccination (immunocastration)
2
3 Input:
4 5
tion, we might have found an increased number of favourable answers. Question 5: We asked for the amount of approval to a different alternative method of producing pork without the usual painful castration. On the scale from ‘‘disagree strongly”, ‘‘disagree”, ‘‘indifferent”, ‘‘agree” and ‘‘agree strongly” the latter two categories were never selected. This might indicate an artefact. We made sure that the interviewers had correctly posed the questions and that the interviewees knew about all the categories. We can therefore exclude an ascertainment error. The high portion of ‘‘indifferent” (82.4%, 52.8%, 59.8% and 57.6% for option i to iv, respectively) may indicate that the comprehension of the proposed methods was insufficient. Moreover, categorical rejection or indifference is a common attitude of persons towards topics which are not completely conceived. It has to be noted, however, that the situation of incomplete comprehension might be typical for consumers who have to choose the pork produced by the methods listed in Table 1. Therefore, the results can be considered as meaningful reflecting the real world situation and are discussed in this context. The strongest disagreement (‘‘disagree” plus ‘‘disagree strongly”) was observed for ‘‘immunocastration” (47.2%). About the same extent of disagreement was found for ‘‘no castration, sort out meat with boar taint and destroy it” and ‘‘no castration, sort out meat with boar taint and produce specific boar-products” (42.4% and 40.2%, respectively). The lowest disagreement was clearly associated with the castration under anaesthesia (17.6%). This is the method most transparent to the consumer and it eliminates reliably the risk of boar taint. It is associated with the least changes to the current situation. Except for the anaesthesia, the whole value chain remains the same. A drawback of the method is the fact that a medical intervention is still necessary. The application of the anaesthesia itself may cause stress in the animal as well as the waking up from it. There are also indications of post-operative pain (Prunier et al., 2006). An other drawback is the additional cost of the anaesthesia, but this will vary greatly depending on whether producers will be allowed to apply it themselves or whether it remains the exclusive right of veterinaries. The stronger disagreement of Swiss consumers to the two alternatives without castration as compared to castration with anaesthesia corresponds well to the finding of Liljenstolpe (2003) who found that Swedish consumers valued the production of pork using castration with anaesthesia significantly higher than the production without castration. However, the strong disagreement to immunocastration found in Switzerland contrasts the result of another Swedish study. Lagerkvist et al. (2006) found that Swedish consumers prefer meat from immunocastrated male pigs to meat from surgically castrated (without anaesthesia) ones and such meat to meat from non-castrated boars. The available dataset allowed for an additional analysis of correlations between characteristics of the interviewees and their responses. In detail, we looked at the type of area
B. Huber-Eicher, P. Spring / Research in Veterinary Science 85 (2008) 625–627
627
Table 2 Effect of ‘‘origin” (German part/French part of Switzerland) and sex on the answers to questions 1b, 2, 4 and 5 Question
German part
No.
Answer
1b 2
The experience with boar taint had an influence on my consumption of pig meat I would not buy products made of tainted meat, even when it could be guaranteed that the boar taint is completely eliminated by processing I would not buy meat from immunocastrated pigs I disagree with immunocastration as an alternative method
4 5
French part
Female
Male
33.0% 63.2%
> >
25.0%* 63.0%n.s.
40.0% 67.9%
> >
22.7%* 58.0%*
58.8% 52.8%
> >
47.5%* 30.5%*
60.5% 51.7%
> >
51.2%* 42.5%*
n.s. *
P > 0.05. Significant proportion at a = 5%.
people live in (rural or urban), age (four categories), origin (French or German part of Switzerland) and sex. The fact that people live in a rural or an urban environment did not influence their answers. Age had an effect in respect to question one: Persons over 60 years had significantly more often experienced boar taint and persons younger than 30 significantly less than the remaining part of the population. The origin of the interviewees had an effect on the answers to questions 1b, 4 and 5, their sex on the answers to questions 1b, 2, 4 and 5 (Table 2). People from the German part of Switzerland reduced the consumption of pork to a higher extent after the experience of boar taint. They were more dismissive towards buying meat from immunocastrated animals and showed a significantly higher disagreement for immunocastration as an alternative method. The same applies for female interviewees when compared to males. Additionally, females showed a stronger dislike for products made of tainted meat but guaranteed without perceivable boar taint. The observed differences in the perception of boar taint and the acceptance of alternatives between German and French parts of Switzerland and between males and females comply well with the results obtained in countries of the European Union. This important issue will have to be considered by the meat industry when promoting a method for the production of pig meat alternative to the current castration without anaesthesia in the year 2009.
This study is part of the project ‘‘ProSchwein”, initiated and supported by the pork industry, the government and two large retail companies. References Bonneau, M., 1998. Use of entire males for pig meat in the European Union. Meat Sci. 49 (Suppl. 1), 257–272. Dijksterhuis, G.B., Engel, B., Walstra, P., Furnols, M.F.I., Agerhem, H., Fischer, K., Oliver, M.A., Claudi-Magnussen, C., Siret, F., Beague, M.P., Homer, D.B., Bonneau, M., 2000. An international study on the importance of androstenone and skatole for boar taint: II. Sensory evaluation by trained panels in seven European countries. Meat Sci. 54 (3), 261–269. Lagerkvist, C.J., Carlsson, F., Viske, D., 2006. Swedish consumer preferences for animal welfare and biotech: a choice experiment. AgBioForum 9 (1), 51–58. Liljenstolpe, C., 2003. Valuing farm animal welfare: measuring consumer response with choice experiments (working paper). Uppsala: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Economics (cited in Lagerkvist, C.J., Carlsson, F., Viske, D., 2006). Lundstro¨m, K., Malmfors, B., Fjelkner-Modig, S., Szatek, A., 1982. Consumer testing of boar meat in Sweden. Swedish J. Agric. Res. 13, 39–46. Prunier, A., Bonneau, M., von Borell, E.H., Cinotti, S., Gunn, M., Fredriksen, B., Giersing, M., Morton, D.B., Tuyttens, F.A.M., Velarde, A., 2006. A review of the welfare consequences of surgical castration in piglets and the evaluation of non-surgical methods. Anim. Welf. 15 (3), 277–289.