Cost benefit
ADAS are calculating the costs and benefits of the interventions to reduce IP in free range hen flocks. The work comprises the following (see link to PDF for more details):
- assigning costs to a wide range of interventions aimed at reducing injurious feather pecking in treatment flocks and predicting financial benefits
- assessing the total costs of implementing these interventions on individual farms
- calculating base-line performance figures to arrive at gross margin figures for each of the treatment flocks in the project
- assessing whether the interventions have, in practice, resulted in the predicted financial improvement
A team from the University of Reading’s Centre for Agricultural Strategy is:>
- Assessing farmers’ willingness-to-pay to prevent injurious pecking by using a questionnaire to elicit their perceptions, attitudes and opinions on the welfare and productivity of their laying birds in connection with injurious (feather) pecking.
- ascertaining consumers’ attitudes towards reducing injurious pecking in laying hens and also estimating their willingness-to-pay to reduce this behaviour
- developing a simple user-friendly cost-benefit model.