Chinese Consumers' Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare - Behaviors, Beliefs, and Responses to Messaging (Faunalytics)
Our study of Chinese consumers finds broad interest in higher animal welfare products, but mostly for food quality and safety reasons.
Key Findings
- Chinese consumers are interested in higher welfare products not due to animal welfare concerns, but for food quality and food safety reasons. Many participants mention having tried or being interested in various higher welfare products, such as those labeled as “organic” or “village-raised” (tǔ 土). However most justified this choice in terms of the benefits in quality and food safety. Higher welfare products are considered tastier and more fragrant when cooked. In terms of food safety, products labeled as higher-welfare are more trusted, while lower-quality products are associated with a range of concerns, including animals being raised in unsanitary conditions, and the use of hormones, antibiotics, and GM products on farms. Despite this, zoonotic diseases were not mentioned as a food safety concern in reference to farmed animals. Welfare considerations are not necessarily ignored, but are likely to be secondary.
- Although animal welfare is not well understood, most participants were receptive to the idea after watching a short video explaining the concept. Participants had varying levels of understanding of the concept upon hearing the Chinese term for animal welfare (dòngwù fúlì 动物福利), and there were several common misunderstandings. However, once it was explained through a video that illustrated the concept using a framing based on the Five Freedoms (WOAH, 2022), participants generally reacted positively to the concept. By the end of the session, some even reported changes in their beliefs and intended behavior. After viewing welfare-related content, many aspects of animal welfare appealed to the participants, such as reducing cruelty, allowing animals to live according to their natural desires, and reducing antibiotic use on farms. Many participants believed that animals felt pain, that they had a morally valuable existence, and that people had a responsibility or duty to treat farm animals more humanely.
- Most consumers believe that meat consumption is necessary for health, but “health” actually encompasses a wide range of specific concepts. Participants gave many specific nutritional explanations for why they felt it was necessary to consume certain animal products; for instance, to support children’s growth or help with certain medical conditions. For example, beef is viewed as healthy for childrens’ development, but is often avoided by older people or those with health problems.
- Meat is preferred for a variety of reasons, beyond just taste. Participants mentioned the positive sensations associated with high-quality meat products, including being filling, mouthfeel, fragrance, and taste. For example, the term xiāng (香), often translated as “fragrant,” referring to either a good smell or a distinctive taste, is one of the most common words used to positively describe the sensation of eating meat. The concepts associated with these positive sensations were often culturally distinctive, and should be understood by advocates as aspects of food preferred by Chinese consumers.
- Perceptions of the human-animal relationship are distinctive and nuanced. There are different ways that participants conceive of human-animal relationships, and this affects what level of welfare, if any, they feel an animal or animal species deserves. Ideas of emotional connections to humans, reciprocity (helping animals in response to a service they provide), that human and animal welfare are intertwined through ecology and food safety concerns, and the perceived purpose of animals all contribute to the perceptions of human-animal relations.
- Animal welfare was not generally seen as a foreign concept. Contrary to what some China-based advocates suspected in our Phase 1 report, we found that most participants exposed to the concept and details of provisions for animal welfare did not generally see it as something foreign, Western, or associated with foreign values.