Analysing public acceptance of four common husbandry systems for dairy cattle using a picture-based approach

Public acceptance is crucial for a sustainable dairy industry. In order to investigate the public acceptance of common indoor dairy housing systems, we asked 358 German citizens to evaluate four systems in a survey: warm loose housing (WLH; closed on all sides, insulated and aerated by ventilators), cold loose housing (CLH; not-insulated, fresh air provided by open sides), CLH with paddock and CLH with pasture in the summer. To ensure that all participants had the same level of knowledge about livestock farming, we used a picture-based approach, providing neutral pictures of the respective housing systems along with informational texts to clarify the differences between them. In a second, qualitative part of the survey, we focused especially on the most common husbandry system for dairy cows. Here, the respondents were asked to evaluate four pictures of cold loose housing (CLH) systems. The acceptance of WLH systems was strikingly low (4%) and only a little higher for CLH systems (17%). Presence of a paddock or pasture clearly increased public acceptance to rates of 55% and nearly 96%, respectively. The results show, that small improvements such as the availability of fresh air and daylight provided by CLH systems, are not sufficient to raise public acceptance significantly. This is underlined by the qualitative evaluations of pictures of CLH systems that mostly refer to aspects of naturalness (e.g. animals can live according to their natural behaviour). From both parts of the survey, we can conclude that the lack of naturalness is the most important reason for the low acceptance rates of indoor stables. However, naturalness, from a public point of view, may not only be confined to the cows' access to daylight and fresh air, but may also include the possibility of animals living in accordance with their specific needs. In general, the results emphasise the high importance of a pasture and paddock provision for the social acceptance of dairy farming.