Urban Consumers' Value Evaluation And Willingness To Pay For Non-surgically Castrated Male Pigs

Along with society's progress and the development of productivity,human moral level and the degree of social civilization has been greatly improved.People gradually improve the concern for animal welfare in the process of production and consumption.From protecting wild animal to treating experimental animal and pets kindly,recently,farm animal welfare has become one of the hotspots.The world organization for animal health especially emphasizes the welfare of farm animal.It is said that farm animal is for human consumption,but when in farming,transportation and slaughter,their benefits cannot be ignored.With the public awareness of animal welfare improving,boar castration behavior gradually reduce in Europe.The European Commission calls for giving up surgically castration voluntarily in 2018 in order to protect the boar from suffering the pain.China is a large country of pork consumption and net import country for pork.The regulations have a great effect on China pork consumption in the future.In foreign countries,such as Britain and Ireland,pork is all from non-surgically castrated male pig.In order to reduce boar taint,they are slaughtered in the lighter weight(about 85kg,usually 130kg).In China,piglet castration is traditional practice in order to avoid the boar taint.With the development of international communication,the original feeding behavior will damage the sustainable development of the pig industry in China.It is imperative to develop the non-surgically castrated boars breeding technology presently.Consumers as final demand for pork,their acceptance and willingness to pay have important effects on the promotion of non-surgically castrated pork.The paper was based on consumer survey data in Nanjing province.First of all,the test was conducted including meat evaluation and smell test.By comparing two kinds of pork(castrated and non-surgically castrated),meat study is to study consumers' acceptance of non-surgically castrated pork.After meat evaluation,smell test is conducted to assess consumers' sensitivity and preference to androstenone and skatole.Contingent valuing method(CVM)was conducted to study consumer WTP for non-surgically castrated pork and analyzing the affecting factors after analyzing the basic recognition of non-surgically castrated pork.Finally,some policy suggestions were put forward:Try to establish the transmission mechanism of non-surgically castrated pork products mechanism.Set up non-surgically castrated boars feeding system.Build consumption pattern of non-surgically castrated pork products for different consumer groups.We draw the main conclusions of this paper:the urban consumer have relatively low awareness of castration and animal welfare.Consumers are sensitive of boar taint and they can accept non-surgically castrated pork.The mean WTP is ?1.46.Awareness of castration and animal welfare,sensitivity and preference to androstenone and skatole all have significant impact on preference of non-surgically castrated pork.Meat evaluation on pork and relationship with animal are positively related to consumer WTP.In addition,education background and marital status have significant influence on consumer WTP for non-surgically castrated pork.