Good afternoon all,

Did anyone see this webinar from Nina von Keyserlingk, University of British Columbia?

It's a hefty 1 hr 13 mins, available here: https://hoards.com/article-30368-reimagining-the-future-of-dairy-&ndash-maintaining-our-social-license-by-improving-animal-welfare.html

The key point I took away relevant to this project: "Education alone does not improve consumer trust"

I should have prefaced that this is based on total of 50 Canadian consumers. Jump to ~ 20 mins to see this.

Cow-separation is also addressed.  Jump to ~33 minutes. Here consumers rated 4 systems from 1 - 7,  1 being negative, 7 being positive:

System                                               -        Rating      

Calf separated, individual housing -        2.7

Calf separated, group housing        -       2.7

Calf separated, foster mother          -       2.9

Cow -calf dairy system                     -       4.9

This is really insightful - the consumer is obviously not accepting of current practices but the foster mother system represents only a slight improvement. Even the cow-calf system didn't generate an overwhelming positive response.  These results suggest this is very complex issue and the current approaches being tabled still don't meet the customers expectations. On a positive note, it tells us we don't need to go changing to foster mother, cow-calf systems anytime soon.