via online journal., The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the nature of corporate positions on animal welfare available on the websites of five meat producing companies in the U.S. The results of the content analysis illustrated that there were common topics among the dialogs the companies were willing to open related to their animal welfare positions. The companies typically took a general approach to animal welfare topics, commonly focusing on their corporate policy and their commitment to animal welfare. While each company focused on a unique combination of topics, companies commonly avoided mentioning more specific and possibly controversial topics and instead chose to focus on big-picture topics such as a commitment to sound animal welfarepractices. Each company used a particular set of frames to couch individual animal welfare messages for consumers. The most common frame led was that the company is an industry leader in animal welfare. Eighteen thematic terms related to livestock production and handling emerged through the content analysis. Of those, animal handling and humane were clearly the most commonly used terms. Future research should include matching these content analysis results with the existing communication strategies of each company, conducting more content analyses on animal protein companies’ other media outlets, as well as further exploring the presence of frames, topics, and terminology in news coverage in comparison to the online messages of animal protein companies.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 157 Document Number: D11639
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2 pages., Online via AgriMarketing Weekly., Release from Protect the Harvest describes "how extremist groups...are cashing in" on the COVID-19 crisis, jeopardizing animal producers and consumers.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 136 Document Number: D11434
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5 pages., Online from FMI Foundation., This report summarizes findings of an online survey distributed to 2,000 U.S. egg/chicken consumers with demographics representing the U.S. population. Findings indicated that "price is a significant driver for the majority of consumers, that consumer response is sensitive to information provided about cage-free production practices, and that willingness-to-pay for cage-free eggs changes in the presence of other label attributes."
Via online November-December issue. "The Front Gate" section., Cites a new information campaign of the Beef Quality Assurance program as an effective way to counter much of the misinformation about new plant-based and cell-cultured products that challenge the stewardship of the cattle industry.
20 pages., via online journal., In a crisis situation, communication is an important asset for safeguarding the reputation of an organization. The communication strategy that is used in a crisis influences the way people perceive the crisis. While extensive research is conducted and clear communication guidelines about crisis communication are provided, current research tends to focus on a single actor in a crisis within a homogeneous stakeholder group. In this article, we analyze whether and how different groups of stakeholders frame a crisis and the extent to which they attribute responsibility for the crisis to actors. The case concerns the use of an illegal lice detergent (fipronil) in eggs in the Netherlands in the summer of 2017. Based on the analysis of Twitter data related to the case using multiple methods (network analysis, a longitudinal analysis and the annotation of a sample of tweets), this study shows that a seemingly simple case in a single sub-arena has different subgroups that use different frames and attribute different responsibilities to different stakeholders. This result implies that a reconsideration of communication strategies during and after a crisis is needed.
18 pages., via online journal, As the public has expressed increasing concerns regarding the humane raising and handling of farm animals, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and industry organizations have developed a series of standards enforcing animal welfare in the poultry industry. Labels and value-added claims were created and defined to differentiate products and to inform consumers’ purchasing decisions. This study identified five labels related to animal welfare that are frequently found on food packages in the U.S. grocery stores, including both the mandatory labels and third-party, voluntary labels. Using a controlled online experiment (N=249), we examined the labels’ effects on consumers’ perception of humane treatment and purchasing tendencies toward egg products. Results showed that while most consumers lack knowledge regarding the labels’ meaning and certification standards, they rely on the labels with simplistic terms (e.g., "certified humane," "cage free") as heuristic cues to judge the ethical treatment of hens on the farm. However, the selected labels did not lead consumers to pay a higher premium for the labeled products. We discussed the implications for regulators, food marketers, and agricultural communicators.
Online via https://newprairiepress.org/jac, Authors identified five labels related to animal welfare that are frequently found on food packages in USA grocery stores Results of a controlled online experiment among consumers showed that while most consumers lacked knowledge regarding meaning of the labels and certification standards, they relied on the labels with simplistic terms as heuristic cues to judge the ethical treatment of hens on the farm. The selected labels did not lead consumers to pay a higher premium for the labeled products.
13pgs, With a focus on journalistic discourse, this paper argues for a re-envisioning of food-system communication that takes non-human animals into account as stakeholders in systems that commodify them. This is especially urgent in light of the global pandemic, which has laid bare the vulnerability to crisis inherent in animal-based food production. As a case study to illustrate the need for a just and non-human inclusive orientation to food-systems communication, the paper performs a qualitative rhetorical examination, of a series of articles in major U.S. news sources in May of 2020, a few months into the economic shutdown in the U.S. in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, millions of pigs were brutally killed on U.S. farms due to the impossibility of killing them in slaughterhouses overrun with COVID-19 outbreaks. The analysis finds that media reporting legitimated violence against pigs by framing narratives from industry perspectives, deflecting agency for violence away from farmers, presenting pigs as willing victims, masking violence through euphemism, objectifying pigs and ignoring their sentience, and uncritically propagating industry rhetoric about “humane” farming. Through these representations, it is argued, the media failed in their responsibility to present the viewpoints of all sentient beings affected by the crisis; in other words, all stakeholders. The methodology merges a textually- oriented approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) with social critique informed by critical animal studies (CAS), and the essay concludes with recommendations for journalists and other food-system communicators, which should be possible to implement even given the current capitalist, industry-influenced media environment and the demonstrated ruthlessness of animal industries in silencing voices inimical to their profitmaking.
20 pages, There has been increased public interest and concerns in issues such as farm animal welfare (FAW) on the island of Ireland, stoked in part by political and governance changes, such as Brexit and COVID-19. Front-of-pack food labelling represents a primary information channel for many people. In advance of considering formalised food labelling schemes, specifically relating to FAW, it is important to ensure an up-to-date understanding of current consumer perceptions of FAW. With this aim, the current study utilised a mixed methodology. Nine focus group discussions (n = 41) and an online survey (n = 972) with food consumers in Ireland and Northern Ireland explored perceptions of FAW. Results suggest that overall perceptions of FAW are high, and consumers perceive FAW to have improved in the last decade. Quantitative (ANOVA) and qualitative results show variations in perception of FAW between sectors. Results from the focus group discussions identified factors underlying consumers’ perception of FAW: the living conditions of the animal, size and intensity of the farm, national standards and schemes, and visibility. Information insufficiencies and knowledge gaps were identified. The findings are discussed in relation to policy implications for the role of public engagement, front-of-pack welfare labelling, and quality assurance schemes.
USA: Center for Food Integrity, Gladstone, Missouri.
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 201 Document Number: D11707
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2 pages., Online from publisher., Examines a period of meat shortages in stores - and headlines about pork and poultry farmers having to euthanize entire barns of animals. "Helping consumers understand the supply chain disruption and impacts may seem daunting, but the key is to keep it simple and engage on the shared values of safe food and a commitment to the highest standards of animal care."
15 pages, The post-war Western world has seen a gradual shift from government to governance, a process that also concerned the issues related to agro-food sustainability, such as food quality, environmental impact, social justice, and farm animal welfare. Scholars believe that social media are a new site that reconfigures relations between various actors involved in the governance of these problems. However, empirical research on this matter remains scarce. This paper fills this gap by examining the case of Februdairy, a Twitter hashtag campaign to promote the British dairy industry, hijacked by animal protection activists. For this case, I employ the relational perspective on technology affordances—as operationalised by Faraj and Azad (in: Leonard et al. (eds), Materiality and organizing. Social interaction in a technological world, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012)—to highlight two distinct strategic modes of embracement of social media functionalities by the opposing groups: hashtag hijacking and crowdsourcing transparency. The analysis reveals also that a pre-existing social structure of the agro-food system conditions reconfiguration of social relations by technology in a way that actually strengthens the tendency to govern the issue of farm animal protection with market mechanisms.
Available online at www.centmapress.org, Results showed that depending on expressed meta-values, respondents had different specific information sources and needs. Online sources were rarely mentioned, the majority of consumers referred to brochures, flyers and interpersonal contacts.
Available online at www.centmapress.org, Findings of a word association task revealed that most participants associated cows, rural areas, and traditional production systems with the cue dairy farms. While purchasing their products, they paid the most attention to attributes such as health and hygiene, indicating that they pay the most attention to product quality and not production quality. Yet more than half indicated that modern production systems contradict their norms and values. Authors concluded that the current modernization efforts in Colombia do not fit to the specific culture of the country.
2 pages., Summary of results from a survey among British citizens inviting attitudes toward food and farming. First such research effort by the British Guild of Agricultural Journalists.
"More than a year after an undercover video campaign revealed animal welfare issues at Fair Oaks Farms, experts say there are important lessons to be learned." Article describes the event and includes sections about principles of crisis communication, tracking animal activists, and tips for hiring employees.
6 pages., Evidence overwhelmingly supports the view that we need to drastically reduce our consumption of animal products for reasons related to the environment and public health, while moral concerns about the treatment of animals in agriculture are becoming ever more common. As governments increasingly recognize the need to change our food production and alternative protein products become more appealing to consumers, agriculture finds itself in a unique period of transition. How do farmers respond to the changing atmosphere? We present secondary analyses of qualitative and quantitative data to highlight some of the uncertainty and ambivalence about meat production felt throughout the farming community. Survey data from France and Germany reveals that in both countries, those who work in the meat industry have significantly higher rates of meat avoidance than those who do not work in the industry. While non-meat-industry workers are more likely to cite concerns for animals or the environment, meat industry workers more often cite concerns about the healthiness or safety of the products. Concurrently, interviews with people who raise animals for a living suggest that moral concerns among farmers are growing but largely remain hidden; talking about them openly was felt as a form of betrayal. We discuss these findings in the context of the ongoing agricultural transition, observe how tension has manifested as polarization among Dutch farmers, and offer some thoughts about the role of farmers in a new world of alternative proteins.
19 pages, via Online journal, This article discusses the interplay of public policy and market-driven initiatives to improve farm animal welfare (FAW). Over the last couple of decades, the notion of ‘market-driven animal welfare’ has become popular, but can the market deliver the FAW that consumers and politicians expect? Using the Danish pork sector as the empirical setting, this article studies efforts to improve private FAW standards following changes to general regulations. The analysis shows that ethical misgivings regarding the adequacy of current and prospective FAW standards are tempered by the economic considerations that guide the practices of some actors. The study also shows that efforts to improve FAW standards are contingent on collaboration and coordination across globalised markets among actors with divergent interests. The findings have important implications for market practices and public policy in relation to FAW.
19 pages., Via online., In a comparative case study, researchers analyzed two social media conflicts between farmers and animal right advocates to understand how conflicts establish, escalate, and return dormant through issue and identity framing and the discursive use of emotions. "The binary opposition is initially established through issue framing but escalates into an identity conflict that involves group labeling and blaming."
19 pages., Via online journal., This article discusses two main issues: the historical invisibility of the role of animal
agriculture in climate change and whether it is useful to include explicit violent images
or “moral shock” of farmed animals in environmental advocacy campaigns to fight
against climate change and environmental devastation. The claim will be explored
at two levels: ethical and strategic. According to the current literature available, it
will be argued that we have sound arguments to believe that using images of farmed
animal suffering (including explicit violent images and moral shocks) is both an ethical
and effective approach to reach the end of speciesist oppression and to mitigate
climate change.
