Consumer attitudes towards production diseases in intensive production systems

Many members of the public and important stakeholders operating at the upper end of the food chain, may be unfamiliar with how food is produced, including within modern animal production systems. The intensification of production is becoming increasingly common in modern farming. However, intensive systems are particularly susceptible to production diseases, with potentially negative consequences for farm animal welfare (FAW). Previous research has demonstrated that the public are concerned about FAW, yet there has been little research into attitudes towards production diseases, and their approval of interventions to reduce these. This research explores the public’s attitudes towards, and preferences for, FAW interventions in five European countries (Finland, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK). An online survey was conducted for broilers (n = 789), layers (n = 790) and pigs (n = 751). Data were analysed by means of Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. The results suggest that the public have concerns regarding intensive production systems, in relation to FAW, naturalness and the use of antibiotics. The most preferred interventions were the most “proactive” interventions, namely improved housing and hygiene measures. The least preferred interventions were medicine-based, which raised humane animal care and food safety concerns amongst respondents. The results highlighted the influence of the identified concerns, perceived risks and benefits on attitudes and subsequent behavioural intention, and the importance of supply chain stakeholders addressing these concerns in the subsequent communications with the public

Driving Consistency in Sustainable Behaviour

This article presents an overview of the changes that took place in the syntactic use of the quantifiers ea and oait "ever" between 1250 and 1800 on the basis of the Frisian Language Corpus. Occurrences of Frisian ea and oait "ever" were classified and counted depending on the type of syntactic construction in which they were found. The constructions which were distinguished tend to correlate with the interpretation which the quantifier receives. This classification was performed for three main periods of the language: 1250-1550; 1550-1700; 1700-1800. It turns out that these periods saw some significant changes in the use of these quantifiers. Special attention is given to the peculiar behaviour of ea "ever" in relative clauses. It turns out that it displays properties both of free choice items and of negative polarity items. Furthermore, Frisian turns out to have been affected by language contact with Dutch at quite an early date, aroudn 1700, when it borrowed oait to replace native ea. This change is analyzed as a case of reinforcement in the sense of Hopper & Traugott (2006). Our overall analysis supports a construction-specific analysis of changes in the use of quantifiers

Follow the Leader? Testing for the Internalization of Law

The internalization of law is said to be a process that involves a change in people’s intrinsic motivation to act in accord with the law’s obligations, so that it is possible to observe imposed obligations become individual choices. We empirically test for this phenomenon by attempting to disentangle the impacts of a legal change (a 5-pence charge on the use of plastic bags) on intrinsic motivation and individual choice. We do so by measuring behaviors and attitudes before and after the legal change and by comparing the impacts across neighboring jurisdictions without the change. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, we find evidence for the internalization of the law. However, using mediation analysis, we find that internalization of the law explains only around 5–8 percent of the change in behavior—the rest being attributable to the direct effect of the charge

Biases in consumers' assessment of environmental damage in food chains and how investments in reputation can help

Sustainability is becoming increasingly relevant to consumers in their food choices. However, they may have a limited understanding of the environmental impact of their purchasing decisions and resort to perceptions and heuristics to guide them. In this study, consumers were asked to complete a categorisation task to determine whether they considered a product to have a high or low carbon footprint, with no information besides that contained on the product's front label. The results demonstrated that raw materials (food category), transportation (UK product), and manufacturing (level of processing) influenced the probability that an item would be classified as either having a low or high carbon footprint. These findings are embedded into the supply chain to explore the role of reputation in reducing the categorisation biases observed in the categorisation task

Estimating the impact of the first COVID-19 lockdown on UK food retailers and the restaurant sector.

Using an approach normally used to estimate cumulative excess deaths, we measure the impact of the COVID-19 shock on sales of UK food retailers and restaurants. To control the spread of COVID-19, travel and social interactions were restricted, putting significant pressure on retailers, who had to adapt whilst complying with a fast-changing marketplace. Results show that in the period March-August 2020, COVID-19 restrictions accounted for a £4 billion increase in sales for food retailers, and £4 billion in non-store retailers; and a £20 billion loss in sales in non-food stores, and £25 billion loss in turnover for food and beverage serving services