What do young French people think about livestock productions in 2014 ?

Anne-Lise Jacquot (1) , Catherine Disenhaus (1) , Yannick Le Cozler (1)

1 PEGASE - Physiologie, Environnement et Génétique pour l'Animal et les Systèmes d'Elevage [Rennes]

In France, as in many other countries, the gap between farmer’s reality and citizen’s expectations is increasing. As citizens and consumers are more and more concerned with livestock farm evolutions, decreasing this gap is of importance, and this should start at school level. However, information on feelings and knowledge of young people about livestock productions are scarce. Surveys and analysis were then performed by 32 master’s level students from Agrocampus-Ouest. They conducted their work from 13th to 24th January 2014, to collect such informations. A closed-questionnaire was full-¿ lled by French secondary school pupils (SSP) who will get their ‘baccalauréat’ (GCE A-levels) in June 2014. SSP were selected since they are soon becoming adult consumers and citizens (around 18 years of age). A total of 1,083 SSP from 28 different general (77%), farming (21%) and technical (7%) high-schools, located almost everywhere in France, were inquired. 46% of them lived in rural area, and 78% of them visited at least once a livestock farm (dairy or beef cattle, mainly). Knowledge on livestock originated from media (25%), family or neighbourhood (23%) or school (18%). Their opinion about livestock farming was good (25%) or neutral (45%). Two third of SSP estimated that faming is a good job. Regarding animal well-fare, they considered that broilers conditions are the worst (35%), whereas 38% of SSP thought that horses had the best living conditions. According to them, livestock has a negative effect on water (72%) and air (57%) quality, but a positive impact on tourism (38%) and landscape (37%). For them, eating meat is important and has to be regular (94%). The main concerns for them regarding livestock productions are those about animal welfare (80%), environment protection (54%) and food production (48%). Finally, 96% of them estimated that keeping livestock productions is of importance in France.

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Anne-Lise Jacquot, Catherine Disenhaus, Yannick Le Cozler. What do young French people think about livestock productions in 2014 ?. 65. Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP), Aug 2014, Copenhague, Denmark. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Annual Meeting of the European Association for Animal Production, 20, 2014, Annual Meeting of the European Association for Animal Production. ⟨hal-01210707⟩