The profile of Italian consumers of animal-friendly foods

Increased awareness of European citizen towards animal welfare, encouraged the development of policies aimed to improve the living conditions of the farmed animals. To increase consumers’ awareness and reduce information distortion, the hypothesis of a common European label based upon a unique welfare certification scheme is presently under investigation. The implementation of animal welfare policies involves an economic effort by farmers. Such costs need to be acknowledged by the market. Otherwise, the risk would be an increase of the production costs for European farmers without a parallel increase in the consumers’ awareness. Our research is based on 335 consumer interviews, conducted near and within supermarkets and hypermarkets in Bologna (North-Italy) and in its province. In order to get information on consumers' knowledge of farming conditions and understand how their perception can influence the consumption behavior of "animal friendly” products a cluster analysis was conducted. The effects that direct cognition attained through farm visits had on consumers’ perception of animal welfare differed across different species. In particular, most consumers (50%) had visited cattle farms, and this experience contributed to improving their perception of cattle welfare. Only 5% of consumers had visited an intensive swine farms but the visit did not modify their perception of swine welfare. Cluster analysis identified four homogenous groups of consumers (clusters) defined by the variables considered most representative in the explanation of the phenomena investigated. Groups were called: 1) “Sensible and aware consumers” (36%); 2) “Disinterested consumers” (36%); 3) “the experts” (6%) and 4) “unconcerned consumers” (25%). The first group represents an important market segment for "animal friendly" products . Therefore, the possibility to recognize the presence of an ethical added value is indispensable both to help the consumer to identify the "animal friendly" products and for raising animal welfare level above the minimum mandatory requirements.