Consumer and Welfare / FROM PSYCHOSIS TO AWARENESS

Consumers’ behavior with regard to animal welfare has changed radically in the last twenty years. The crisis and warnings on animal products throughout the world, as well as the increasing interest of the mass media in farming techniques related to food healthiness, have modified the request for minimum animal welfare standards.Today, after over ten years from the BSE crisis, a less emotional, but not necessarily less distrustful, customer’s behavior regarding the industrial reality that concerns the production of animal products can be observed.Chronicle of A confidence CRISiS83.3 % of Italians are aware of the close relation between farming typology and quality of the food products obtained. If we analyze this datum together with the European statistics which periodically confirm the communitarian consumers’ suspicion with regard to meat or other animal products, we can just conclude that there is a notorious distrust of rearing conditions. But what do consumers mean by rearing conditions?It is necessary to go a few years back in time, at least to 1996, when the “mad cow” psychosis spread along Europe. In fact, it was just since the BSE crisis that many consumers were obliged, to their regret, to become used to the equation “animal=machine” as well as to the inevitable effects the lack of animal welfare have on food healthiness. Those who end up being accused are the rearing plants and the non-natural systems animals are obliged to live in. Newspapers all around the world show ruminants turned into carnivorous animals and people have to face a reality which had been previously unknown for them: the media launches an information campaign that ranges from animal feed and intensive rearing to chained calves.A mechanism driven by one scandal after the other is operated on emotional basis, getting to comprise all animal species. In 1999, for example, it affected poultry, as a result of dioxin contamination, then to pork, trout and big artificially-bred fish. Apart from finding out contaminated animal feed and non-natural rearing conditions, the European media brings horrifying episodes to light.The chronicle of these rearing conditions, as it always happens in media processes, is rapidly exhausted as the days pass by, but the consumers’ attention is not. This mechanism is neither inelastic nor perfectly elastic; a first fear reaction that results in a drastic consumption drop is followed by a slow return to a market that the noisier the scandal has been, the more guarantees it requires from both legislators and farmer. Now that the first BSE phase – the great fear – is over, institutions are obliged to implement health standards as well as to publicly justify and illustrate them. The animal source information system is faster and the most sensible farmers are ready to provide voluntary information, which is sometimes also certified by external bodies.A similar scandal broke about chicken with dioxin. However, in this case the answers come from the market rather than from the institutions. In fact, there has been an important increase of chicken and hen feed certification since 1999, and the rearing techniques used with these animals have to be indicated on the label.To sum up, one shock after the other make animal welfare become a real part of the consumers’ cultural heritage, as a synonym of food quality. A different behavior that demands a change in both the communication rules and the standards of quality and safety of animal products.The institutional world’s reaction, on the contrary, is on a rather hysterical course. The warnings, which are often very foreseeable, and their consequent market crisis make legislators consider the fast tightening-up of regulations which, even if their function is to hide scandals for a time, do not contribute to bring the productive world near the consumer at all. After general attempts to quiet the market (by the way, remember those years the European Commission addressed itself to try not to disturb the market by preventing the spreading of information related to the BSE or the attempt to increase the level of tolerable dioxins in food, at the height of the Belgian crisis) farmers have to face a series of fast and unsustainable changes, and they end up being perceived as the only scapegoat and not as the irreplaceable basis for building an animal production that really respects animals.A Cultural welfareBut what does the consumer mean by animal welfare? Although the term welfare has not been given a univocal definition at scientific level, for the ordinary people it means something much easier (perhaps more simplistic). International crises, together with a globalization that brings remote phenomena near, even the ones that take place thousands of kilometers away, control the situation.In fact, three approaches have been described by literature for the concept of animal welfare up to the 90’s.On the one hand, there is the most western antropocentric approach that affirms that any treatment given to the animal effectively impacts on the man through the food it consumes.There is also the pathocentric, or compassionate vision. It is based on the belief that “any living creature that can feel can also suffer”.Finally, there is an approach that can be defined as biocentric and which affirms that any animal being must be respected as an intrinsic value.As a result of the frequent scandals and the evidence of human variants of illnesses that used to affect animals only, the three approaches are increasingly melting into one.A new concept that results from the conjunction of different paths which can seem to be contrasting only in appearance can be discovered in consumers. On the one hand, there is the functionality: the animal must be kept in optimum healthy conditions so as not to become weak, need medicine or be subject to illnesses which could be transmitted to the man. It is in this health condition where animals’ feelings appear for the first time. Suffering and stress are seen as potential risks for healthiness or, simply, for the quality of animal products. On the other hand, there is naturalness: the animal must be able to express itself in conditions which are as harmonious as possible with the environment that shelters it. The combination of the different approaches can be summarized in a wide term, such as health, which is understood as the absence not only of illnesses but also of stress and non-natural conditions. In fact, there is no doubt that stress impacts on the resistance of the animals’ immune system and this concept was adopted by ordinary people over ten years ago, exactly when the BSE appeared. The concept of welfare is then closely related to the concept of health, and therefore, less exogenous substances are used (e.g. antibiotics) and consequently, there are less probabilities of finding them or their metabolites in the food and, not less important, environmental pollution is also reduced. In fact, we must not forget the strong relation between animal production and the environment.In this sense it could be interesting to observe how a group of Italian consumers defines the optimum conditions for safe rearing, respecting animal welfare .The three environmental factors most frequently mentioned appeared in this order: available space, feeding and environmental health. On the other hand, the three first positions among the management conditions were: freedom of movement, comfort and the renunciation to any form of mutilation.Leaving aside the feeding and environmental health factors – which consumers are used to identifying as immediate perils for animal products – it is clear how the concept of health (for both the man and the animal) is inseparably related to animal welfare, understood as a set of practical and – perhaps this is the greatest latest news - ethical rules.GUARANTEESThe development of critical awareness, as it always happens in consumption spheres, was accompanied by the need of precise guarantees and controls able to bring confidence back. The European consumer first, and the American one more recently, demand information and transparency, claiming for labels that not only show the product follow-up but also indicate the rearing methods, the cares adopted, the use of suspicion-free animal feed, etc.Nowadays, regarding the confidence which just ten years ago was based on the brand-name, the only evidence of the goodness of the whole production process, Europeans have a decidedly layer behavior. The same trend can be observed in the American consumer, who is losing confidence in the old approach that has always characterized the U.S. food policy.In this case, the statement “any food is safe until the opposite is proved to be true” does not convince anybody anymore. It is an axiom that has guided American elections both in the policy of Ogm and in the use of hormones for breeding, just as an example.In both continents, for example, consumers insistently claim for a label that demonstrates the origin of the food, and it is not a coincidence that this demand arose, both in the USA and in the EU, after the first BSE cases which disturbed both markets.In all cases, the consumer has abandoned the unlimited mandate and claims for justifications for both genuineness promises and presumed quality characteristics that can justify prices above the average. This generalized distrust towards animal products, defined in a simplistic way, can be explained as the result of a long series of false assurances made by farmers and institutions. The phenomena defined by different parties – perhaps reasonably – as “collective psychosis” are precisely originated in complicities and in the attempt to silence warnings which could have been much more controlled.It is not impossible, then, to understand that the consumer pretends, together with the farmer guarantee statement, the intervention of a crossed system of public and private controls, being the latter independent from the farmer.It is a petition from which not only all the biological animal production formulas which, in one way or another, were ready to echo it, but also the traditional animal production consortiums that had been the first ones to provide information and certificates, initially benefited in Europe. Consumers’ doubts and aspirations seem to be similar to the legislator’s, the scientists’ and even, in the most virtuous cases, the market demands. There is no doubt that nowadays it is necessary to have a reliable instrument to measure animal welfare. On this regard, there are many formulas and, according to the very experts, they are still vague. A generally appreciated via was the one implemented first by Austria and then by Germany. In these countries, there are evaluation cards (Ani35L and TGI200, respectively) that measure animal welfare through a score so as to provide the necessary certificate to biological farms. The basic principles, which are common to both instruments, foresee the determination of some characteristics such as possibility of movement, social contact, comfort and type of care provided to the animal. In Germany, in addition, the feeding and quality of the animal-man relation are also evaluated. If integrated with analogous considerations related to transport and slaughter, these cards could easily represent a guarantee for the consumer and an opportunity for the farmer to restore a trustful relation with the market.We are perfectly aware, regarding animal welfare standards, of which and how many different approaches could there be nowadays in different parts of the world. And more than that, we know how they could be combined between developed and developing countries. Within the West and even in the most developed forms of regulation there are also completely different approaches. It is enough to consider, by way of example, the organic animal production in the USA and Europe. In this sector, considered as the real animal welfare “tip of the iceberg” by consumers, there are very different conceptions between the two markets. To such an extent that the USA do not say anything about animal transport, while in Europe there are precise rules to limit stress and ban the use of tranquillizers as well as any kind of electricity treatment. Based on these different approaches, so evident in countries with a similar yield level, it is easy to understand the difficulties that can arise when talking of minimum valid animal welfare levels also for farmers who can hardly earn enough money to get by.RULES AND AIDSTherefore, the consumer does not agree to just observing the dish on the table so as to be sure about the food healthiness. Neither does he look just within the nation or the continent borders. The globalization of markets demands increasingly uniform health and animal welfare standards. It will certainly be our challenge in the following years, and it will have to be maintained at the top of our strength, at least so as not to incur the repetition of scandals that impact on whole productive sectors which are even thousands of kilometers away from our own little piece of land. An example of the unimaginable is that nowadays we have a different market frontier in the dramatic evolution of the avian influenza that up to now has left impressive numbers behind: 50 million eliminated animals, about twenty dead people and damages that amount to tens of million dollars. Nowadays, in view of this drama, consumers from developed countries react once more in a emotive way, requesting origin and follow-up labels so as to recognize and avoid consuming meat from risk areas. Scientific bodies, logically, try desperately to deal with the emergency, by observing all the animal slaughtering measures and developing a vaccine to limit contagion. But once more we are witnesses of the final stage of something bad which could have been prevented, and maybe avoided, through precautionary measures. Perhaps this is not the most adequate moment to debate on animal welfare (and the images of thousands of volatiles confined in bags and buried alive that were on TV throughout the world prove it), but we can theorize that after this phase there will be more awareness, as it happened when the consumer requested increasingly strict standards after the mad cow. Our role, then, is to consider that measures of simple defense of national interests (as it would certainly be the case of the origin labels) cannot be enough to avoid new crises of this kind. History teaches us that most of human illnesses gradually disappeared thanks to socio-economic progresses, which resulted in the improvement of health conditions. The mere imposition of rules (related to both health and animal welfare) in countries which are bound to deal with a market that still demands products at extremely low prices and constrains the transfer of technology, cannot be the solution, neither for these countries nor for consumers in the richest areas, who see that all the things they threw away through the door are returning through the window.*(1) EDITORIAL CHIEF OF THE WEEKLY MAGAZINE IL SALVAGENTEVIA PINEROLO 43 - 00182 ROME – ITALY - TEL. 0039067020440EMAIL r.quintili@ilsalvagente.it**(2) VETERINARIAN, FREE-LANCE PROFESSIONALVIA F.VALESIO, 13 - 00179 ROME – ITALY - TEL. 00393333329304EMAIL goffredo.grifoni@libero.it1.Cirm Survey What is there in the animals’ feeder? November 27, 2003Consumer perceptions of meat quality (Cathal Cowan B. And others, 1999); Eurobarometro 54, April 2001See Manuel Medina Ortega report BSE research commission Document FR/RR/319/319544fr - PE220.544/def./A date 7/2/97.Scapagni 1989 and others.Il Salvagente survey in a 500-reader sampling (2002)

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