Animal welfare organic values

Ethics also includes welfare quality what is good quality of life for an animal Therefore, when evaluating animal welfare issues in organic farming systems, we need to understand if particular organic values can be used to help guide decisions regarding appropriate quantity and quality of animal welfare. 

Is animal welfare an issue according to organic values ... 

The third category is possibly in best accordance with organic values. Not only is natural behaviour important, but also food adapted to animal physiology and an environment similar to the biotope natural to the species are considered important. Studies of organic farmers suggest that they understand animal welfare primarily in terms of natural living (Lund ef al. 2002,2004b). 

Overall, some value differences seem to exist among consumers in different parts of Europe. While animal welfare is a value almost unknown to Italian or Greek consumers, it plays an important role in the Northern European countries (Zanoli and Naspetti 2001). Similarly, environmental concerns and altruistic values seem to play a more important role in motivating Northern European consumers than Mediterranean ones. These results highlight the fact that consumer perception is not related directly to organic principles or to good taste or appetising appearance. 

Although the experts assessments vary enormously by country, the mean values show that the most important subjects with respect to the environmental impacts of organic farming are landscape, soil, ground and surface water and biodiversity. Climate as well as air and energy uses are, however, assessed to be of only minor importance. Only two experts identified animal health and welfare to be of special importance for organic farming in this context. 

Vaarst, M., Roderick, S., Lund, V., Lockeretz, W. and Hovi, M. 2003. Organic principles and values the framework for organic animal husbandry. In Vaarst, M., Roderick, S., Lund, V. and Lockeretz, W. (eds) Animal Health and Welfare in Organic Agriculture. CABI Publishing, Wallingford, pp. 1-12. 

A recent survey in Scotland indicated that consumers appeared to delegate responsibility for ethical issues in meat production to the meat retailer or the government (Andersen et al., 2005). This was attributed to the fact that consumers did not seem to wish to be reminded about issues connected with the animal when choosing conventionally produced or organic meat (McEachern and Schroder, 2002). Moreover, organic meat was perceived as expensive, especially when consumers did not perceive a positive difference in quality. This resulted in some consumers being more interested in conventional meats with added-value features or from animals housed under improved welfare conditions rather than organic meat. 

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