To create and sustain a competitive advantage in markets that increasingly value animal welfare attributes, meat companies need to meet public and private production standards while communicating to final consumers through their brands. Data are collected from a representative sample of 460 U.S....

Animal welfare concerns are having dramatic impacts on food and livestock markets. Here we examine consumer preferences for pork products with a focus on use of gestation crates. We examine underlying consumer valuations of pork attributes while considering preference heterogeneity as well as...

To create and sustain a competitive advantage in markets that increasingly value animal welfare attributes, meat companies need to meet public and private production standards while communicating to final consumers through their brands. Data are collected from a representative sample of 460 U.S....

While modern swine production systems rely on confinement production, there are calls to reduce or eliminate the use of gestation stalls. To understand the economic aspects of this debate, this article reviews the structural evolution of the industry, the underlying legal framework in animal...

Paper replaced with revised version 06/13/08

Livestock producers can respond to increasing consumer demand for certain production process attributes by providing verifiable information on the practices used. Consumer willingness to pay data were used to inform producer decision-making regarding selection of verification entities for four...

Replaced with revised version of paper 7/21/09.