Consumer perception and communication on welfare in organic laying hen farming

A major reason for increased societal popularity of organic production systems is the growing general discontent with intensive farming practices. However, urbanization leads to limited knowledge of farming and farm animal welfare. Consumers believe organic farming leads to better animal welfare, although most health and welfare issues seen in conventional systems are also found in organic poultry systems. The majority of consumers do not translate attitude and good intention into action, the actual purchase of organic products. Understanding this intention-behaviour gap may lead to increased sales of organic products. Effective communication and education can create trust, added additional values and credibility, and may lead to structured perceptions, convictions, values, norms, knowledge and interests and lead to better understanding of organic farming and farm animal welfare. Merchandising strategies can reduce barriers the consumer may encounter at the moment of decision making

An algorithm for a bi-objective parallel machine problem with eligibility, release dates and delivery times of the jobs

The scheduling of parallel machines is a well-known problem in many companies. Nevertheless, not always all the jobs can be manufactured in any machine and the eligibility appears. Based on a real-life problem, we present a model which has three different machines, called as high, medium and low level respectively. The set of jobs to be scheduled on these three parallel machines are also distributed among these three levels: one job from a level can be manufactured in a machine of the same or higher level. But a penalty appears when a job is manufactured in a machine different from the higher level. Besides, there are release dates and delivery times associated to each job. The tackled problem is bi-objective with the criteria: minimization of the final date-i.e. the maximum for all the jobs of their completion time plus the delivery time-and the minimization of the total penalty generated by the jobs. In a first step we revisited possible heuristics to minimize the final date on a single machine. In a second step a heuristic is proposed to approximate the set of efficient solutions and the Pareto front of the bi-objective problem. All the algorithms are experimented on various instances.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A GPU-accelerated Branch-and-Bound Algorithm for the Flow-Shop Scheduling Problem

Branch-and-Bound (B&B) algorithms are time intensive tree-based exploration methods for solving to optimality combinatorial optimization problems. In this paper, we investigate the use of GPU computing as a major complementary way to speed up those methods. The focus is put on the bounding mechanism of B&B algorithms, which is the most time consuming part of their exploration process. We propose a parallel B&B algorithm based on a GPU-accelerated bounding model. The proposed approach concentrate on optimizing data access management to further improve the performance of the bounding mechanism which uses large and intermediate data sets that do not completely fit in GPU memory. Extensive experiments of the contribution have been carried out on well known FSP benchmarks using an Nvidia Tesla C2050 GPU card. We compared the obtained performances to a single and a multithreaded CPU-based execution. Accelerations up to x100 are achieved for large problem instances

Survey among Belgian pig producers about the introduction of group housing systems for gestating sows

There is a global move from individual to group housing of gestating sows. In the European Union, individual gestating stalls will be banned by 2013. Just like in other industrialized regions, these stalls have been the standard housing system for intensively kept sows from the 1960s onward in the Flemish region of Belgium. Because the socioeconomic consequences for the pig industry may be far-reaching and because farmer attitude may influence the realization of the hoped-for improvement in animal welfare in practice, we conducted a survey from 2003 until 2009 among representative samples of Flemish pig producers every 2 yr. The share of farms with group housing increased from 10.5% in 2003 to 29.8% in 2007, but then dropped to 24.6% in 2009. It appears that after 2005 users of old group housing systems in particular stopped farming. Because sow herd size increased more on farms with vs. without group housing and because the proportion of the herd that was group-housed also tended to increase between 2003 to 2009, the change to group housing took place faster when expressed at the level of the sow (from 9.1% in 2003 to 34.1% in 2009) instead of farm. The percentage of farmers planning to convert to group housing within 2 yr was 4.1% in 2003, and 6 to 7% thereafter. These were typically young farmers (P = 0.006) with a large sow herd (P < 0.001) and with a likely successor (P = 0.03). Free access stalls were the most common group housing system (31% of farms, 37% of sows). Their popularity is expected to increase further at the expense of electronic feeding stations, ad libitum feeding, and stalls/troughs with manual feed delivery. User satisfaction was generally high but depended on whether or not all gestating sows were kept in group (P < 0.001), the provisioning of environmental enrichment (P = 0.057), and the age (P = 0.012) and type (P = 0.016) of system. The main criteria for choosing a certain group housing system were the investment costs and sow health and welfare. The importance of economic reasons (P = 0.007) and type of labor (P = 0.043) decreased with the age of the system. In 2003 and 2005 the main reason for not having converted to group housing was that farmers would stop keeping sows by 2013. In 2007 and 2009 the reasons mainly concerned uncertainty about the future and maximally delaying the conversion. Belgium is one of the European Union countries where the pig industry is expected to undergo drastic changes during the few years remaining before the ban on individual housing

Economic impact of decreasing stocking densities in broiler rabbit production based on Belgian farm data

[EN] Stocking density is a prominent issue in public debates on farm animal welfare. Public perceptions and economic impact of reduced stocking density should be considered, along with effects on animal performances and welfare. In this paper, experimental data and accountancy data based on 15 Belgian farms were combined to calculate the financial impact of different stocking densities on broiler rabbit farm profitability. Using the partial budget technique, only those elements that change with stocking density were taken into account. From the experiment, feed conversion and feed intake were found to increase slightly though significantly with decreasing stocking density, although only 5% and 6% of the variation, respectively, were explained by stocking density. However, reducing stocking density implies a recalculation of all costs in a reduced number of broiler rabbits, which has a negative impact on farm profitability. Reducing stocking density from the standard situation of 15 rabbits per m² to 10 rabbits per m² reduced added value by 22 euros per doe. In general, farm income was low and amounted to only 28.10 euros per doe during 2006-2008 for the reference situation of 15 rabbits per m². Below a density of 9 rabbits/m², a negative farm income was calculated. Sensitivity analysis showed that rabbit meat price has a stronger influence on the added value at a given density than rabbit feed price.This research is funded by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT Vlaanderen), Brussels, Belgium. We gratefully acknowledge the Flemish Association of Poultry and Rabbit Breeders, and especially Ilka Hertogs for their willingness to provide the used accountancy data.132Verspecht, A.; Maertens, L.; Vanhonacker, F.; Tuyttens, F.; Van Huylenbroeck, G.; Verbeke, W. (2011). Economic impact of decreasing stocking densities in broiler rabbit production based on Belgian farm data. World Rabbit Science. 19(3). doi:10.4995/wrs.2011.849SWORD12319

Assessment of broiler chicken welfare in Southern Brazil

Scientific literature on broiler chicken welfare in Brazilian industrial systems is scarce. This study aimed at assessing broiler chicken welfare on industrial farms in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil, using the Welfare Quality (R) assessment protocol for poultry, to provide directly applicable scientific information. Results are presented as criteria scores ranging from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better welfare; and percentages of prevalence. The scores classified as excellent (above 80) were absence of prolonged thirst, absence of prolonged hunger, litter quality, breast blister and touch test. Enhanced scores (between 55 and 80) were comfort around resting, plumage cleanliness and dust sheet test. Acceptable scores (between 20 and 55) were thermal comfort, stocking density, absence of injuries, footpad dermatitis and hock burn; and unacceptable scores (below 20) were lameness and qualitative behavioral assessment. The median percentage of mortality and culled birds were 5.2% and 0.6%, respectively. This study provides useful information to select priorities of action on assessed farms and may contribute for setting up legal standards and guiding decisions related to animal welfare issues in Brazil

Market opportunities for animal-friendly milk in different consumer segments

Consumers have increasing, but highly variable, interest in sustainability attributes of food, including ethical aspects, such as animal welfare. We explored market opportunities for animal-friendly cow’s milk based on segmentation (cluster) analysis. Flemish survey participants (n = 787) were clustered (n = 6) based on their intention to purchase (IP) animal-friendly milk, and their evaluation of cows’ welfare state (EV). Three market opportunity segments were derived from clusters and labelled as “high”, “moderate” and “limited”. Only 8% of the participants belong to the “high market opportunities” segment, characterized by a high IP and a low EV. The “limited” segment (44%) indicated a neutral to low IP and a positive EV. The “moderate” segment (48%) had a moderately positive IP and positive/negative EV. Reported willingness to pay, interest in information about the state of animal welfare and importance of the product attribute “animal welfare” differed among segments and were strongly related to IP. Most promising selling propositions about animal-friendly milk were related to pasture access. The high degree of differentiation within the Flemish milk market reveals market opportunities for animal-friendly milk, but for an effective market share increase supply of animal-friendly products needs to get more aligned with the heterogeneous demand