Performing Department
Department of Dairy Science
Non Technical Summary
Most of the U.S. population is now several generations removed from farming and unfamiliar with current food-production practices yet also increasingly dependent on these agricultural systems. This means consumers must trust that food production practices align with their values and expectations and discovering evidence to the contrary erodes public trust. For the dairy industry, poor treatment of cows by farm workers can both deteriorate public trust and result in profound negative impacts on animal welfare.Our goal is to build public trust in the U.S. dairy industry, particularly with regard to cow-handling practices and their effects on animal welfare. Our interdisciplinary project will integrate principles from applied psychology and animal welfare science to provide practical, socially sustainable, evidence-based tools to improve the training of dairy-farm personnel and the welfare of the cows under their care. We hypothesize that to promote consistently positive behaviors toward cows, we must target the attitudes that dairy-farm workers hold toward those animals. We also hypothesize that, to build or maintain public trust in dairy production practices, we must engage with members of the public while developing our training program and integrate the values of both public and industry stakeholders.Our objectives include evaluating public attitudes toward dairy cow-handling practices to understand risks for negative perceptions of dairy farming. We also seek tounderstand the attitudes of farm workers toward working with cows and to identify their individual traits and cultural, socioeconomic, and environmental factors predicting those attitudes. We will then incorporate this new knowledge into designing and rigorously evaluating the effectiveness of an accessible, bilingual, and culturally relevant digital training program for dairy-farm personnel.By determining how various cow-handling practices are viewed by the public and by learning why negative interactions sometimes occur between humans and cows on farms, we will develop an effective training program resulting in lasting positive changes in dairy workers' attitudes and behaviors toward cows. We anticipate that this gain in knowledge and change in behavior will help improve public trust in U.S. dairy production practices.
Animal Health Component
5%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
25%
Applied
75%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Our proposed integrated research and extension project aims to build trust in the U.S. dairy industry by engaging the public and dairy industry professionals, including personnel who handle cattle directly ("stockpeople"). We will design, implement, and evaluate a training program to promote humane dairy cattle-handling practices based on behavioral-change theories, which have proven to be successful in the Australian swine and dairy cattle sectors, and which incorporate the attitudes held by both dairy-industry and public stakeholders. Our comprehensive, highly interdisciplinary project will integrate applied psychology and animal welfare science to provide practical, socially sustainable, evidence-based information to improve dairy stockperson training and dairy cattle welfare.The long-term goal of our project is to build public trust in the U.S. dairy industry by improving dairy workers' attitudes and behavior toward dairy cattle. We will address this goal using 5 specific objectives:Obj. 1: Evaluate public attitudes toward dairy cattle-handling practices and stockperson training. Our findings will help establish which handling practices, if done poorly, represent the greatest risk for negative public perception.Obj. 2: Determine dairy stockperson attitudes toward dairy cows and working with them, along with the factors associated with those attitudes. We predict that individual, social, and informational factors will contribute to stockperson attitudes toward the cattle under their care.Obj. 3: Design a newtraining program to improve dairy stockperson attitudes and behavior toward cattle. We anticipate incorporating findings from Obj. 1 and 2 into an accessible, bilingual and culturally relevant program for the U.S. dairy industry.Obj. 4: Implement and field test the efficacy of the redesigned ProHand Dairy training program. We predict our redesigned training program will improve stockperson attitudes and behaviors toward dairy cattle, resulting in improvements in animal-based welfare indicators.Obj. 5: Extend the results of our multidisciplinary aims to the dairy industry and public.These objectives directly address the Inter-Disciplinary Engagement in Animal Systems (IDEAS) program priority to identify and resolve factors that influence building trust around animal agriculture across a diversity of communities, such as consumers and producers, to improve animal welfare and well-being. Ours will be the first project to use this highly interdisciplinary approach to gain a deeper understanding of why negative human-animal interactions occur on dairy farms and how to best prevent them. This information, along with our training program, will provide valuable resources to inform extension programming and the industry's ongoing efforts to improve stockperson training on dairy farms across the U.S.
Project Methods
Obj. 1. Approach 1 In Yr. 1, we will use a mixed-methods approachto assess the opinions of experts and the general WI population about cattle-handling practices.Using purposive sampling procedures, we will recruit both industry professionals and general-population adults (n = 50 each)to complete a 30-minonline survey. Respondents will view video clips of a range of cattle handling practices and estimate how frequentlythey believe the behaviors depicted occur on U.S. dairy farms, along with their attitudes toward the practices in the videos, and the emotions they felt in response. Using a multiple-regression analysis approach, we predict group differences will be found between experts and the general public on all dependent variables (i.e., perception of frequency of handling behaviors, appropriateness/acceptability/humaneness, and state emotions experienced in response).Afterward, WI-based respondents from each group (n = 18 from each) will be invited to attend one of 6 focus groups. A semi-structured interview will elicit further opinions and perspectives on cattle-handling practices, public/industry information gaps, and attitudes about the dairy industry. Video clips from recordings of the focus groups will incorporated into the training program (Obj. 3) to inform dairy stockpeople of both expert and public viewpoints on cattle handling.Obj 1. Approach 2 In Yr. 4, following the completion of Obj. 2-4, the training program will be adapted for the lay public. We will recruit 24 new WI attendeesto individually complete the digital training modules before breaking into 4focus groups (n = 6 each). Semi-structured interviews will be used to explore: 1) perspectives on dairy cattlewelfare, 2) experience of completing the training program, and 3) other animal-welfare questions/concerns. All small groups will then return to the larger group to pose their questions and concerns to a panel of industry experts. We will facilitate dialogue to understand the factors that build public trust in the dairy industry. We will assess the impact of this approach using a pre/post questionnaire assessing levels of trust in the dairy industry, which will be compared with a paired t-test. This exercise to improve perceptions could serve as a model for further stakeholder engagement around issues of importance to the dairy industry.Obj.1. Approach 3 In Yr. 5, we will evaluate how proactive vs. reactive implementation of training affects public perceptions. We predict that proactive training (i.e., without documented poor animal handling) may help mitigate negative perceptions of dairy farming compared to reactive training (i.e., in response to evidence of poor animal handling). We will recruit a sample of U.S. citizens (n = 500) via Amazon's Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing service.Participants will receive information about recent activity of a fictitious dairy farm inone of two randomly assigned treatments. (1) The Reactive treatment will be operationalized by describing the implementation of animal-handling training as part of a response to an undercover video showing evidence of inhumane cattle-handling practices. (2) In the Proactive treatment, the article will indicate that the farm voluntarily participates in a science-based stockperson-training program aimed at promoting positive stockperson attitudes and behaviors toward cows and minimizing occurrences of inhumane cattle-handling practices. After reading these respective materials, participants will respond to a series of questions assessing their trust, attitudes, and dairy-purchasing intentions. We predict that proactive animal handling training will result in more positive attitudes, greater trust, and greater purchasing intentions than reactive training.Obj.2.In Yr. 2,we will survey workers purposely sampled from a variety of dairy farms.The survey instrument willaccommodate both English- and Spanish-speaking respondents and will consist of 4 sections focused on: (1)understanding perceptions of stockperson training, (2) identifying dairy animal-handling attitudes, (3) understandingperceptions of dairy cattle-welfare issues, (4) characterizing past experiences with animals. We predict attitudes toward working with cattle will be associated with individual as well as social factors including age, gender, political orientation, religiosity, and pet ownership.Obj.3.We will integrate findings from Obj. 1 and 2 into our training program, to be offered in both English and Spanish.The goals will be to both assess and change negative attitudes and behaviors toward dairy cattle using a cognitive-behavioral intervention. The digital program will include a combination of slideshows (with videos, animations, and voiceover narration), an attitudes questionnaire, and an individualized attitudes report catered to each participant.The digital program will take approximately 90 minplus30 minof recommended in-person discussion facilitated by a trainer.We will pilot test the program in Yr. 3 using interviews and surveys of both Spanish- and English-speaking personnel from at least 4 WI dairy farms. Two phases of evaluation will address both usability and satisfaction. (1) Asmall sample (n = 3+ of each language) will complete each program module in person; we will record critical problems and other concerns with the usability of each module. We will modify the program based on the initial feedback. (2) The updated program will be implemented with a larger group (n = 10-15 of each language) who will complete a survey on the usability of the program and their overall satisfaction with it. The program will then be revised again and finalized.Obj.4. In Yr. 3-4 we will test the effectiveness of the program on dairy farmsrandomly allocated to either a treatment (Intervention; n = 30 farms) or control (No Intervention; n = 30 farms) group. (Note: after all data collection is completed for the No Intervention farms, they will be offered a facilitated training session for their workers.)All farms will be visited 3 times over the course of the study. Visit 1 (Pre-Intervention):baseline measurements will be taken from cows and stockpeople by an observer blinded to the treatment. Visit 2 (Intervention): ~6 mo. later, herds in the Intervention treatment will receive our training program through the guidance of trainers from our team. Herds enrolled in the No Intervention treatment will also be visited, but will complete basic, widely available skills-only training. Visit 3 (Post-Intervention): ~6 mo. after visit 2, we will record the same measurements as we did in visit 1. To determine the impact of our intervention on the welfare of dairy cows, we will measure their behavioral signs of fear of humans (flight distance using an avoidance test), behavioral measurements of affective state (Qualitative Behavioral Assessment; QBA), behavior at milking, lameness, and milk production.The behavior of stockpeople toward cows in the milking parlor will be measured during visits 1 and 3 and will be categorized as either positive or negative tactile interactions. Analysis will include linear mixed models, PCA, structural equation models, and correlation analysis, depending on the meausres.We predict our intervention will result in improvements in animal-based outcomes such as reduced flight distance, increased milk production, and reduced lameness in dairy cattle. We also predict farms using our training program will see benefits in stockperson behavior (i.e., a reduction in negative interactions and an increase in positive interactions with cows), increases in satisfaction with working in the milking parlor, and increases in self-reported benefits of the Intervention.Obj. 5. Throughout all years, we will extendour findings to stakeholders, as already under the Products and Audiences sections.We will evaluate the effectiveness and impact of our extension activities by tracking participation and soliciting feedback throughout our project.