A field experiment on consumer willingness to accept milk from cloned cows
Date
2013
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
With continuous advances in biotechnology, the likelihood of animal cloning being used as a livestock breeding technique has existed. This gained momentum when the sheep, Dolly, was successfully cloned in Scotland in 1996. The possibility for milk and meat from cloned animals entering the food supply has gotten even closer when after a long period of consideration, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2008 concluded that meat and milk from cloned animals is as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals. The FDA does not require mandatory labeling for foods from cloned animals. Even though milk and meat from cloned cows are not yet on the market, if or when they eventually do, there will be some ramifications depending on consumer reaction.
The purpose of the research was thus to investigate consumers’ responses and attitudes towards the introduction of an unlabeled food product from cloned animals, in this instance milk from cloned cows. The primary goal was to determine how much compensation consumers would need to be paid to exchange a cup of conventional milk with milk that may or may not have come from cloned cows. Secondary goals included examining consumers’ opinions and knowledge of animal cloning, their views on labeling and whether they believe the technology should be used. Also considered were the potential consumer welfare impacts of a future introduction of milk from cloned cows. The research was accomplished through the use of field experiments in October 2012 with a total of 148 subjects. Subjects were members of the general population and milk consumers approached to participate in a milk survey from four different locations in Delaware.
The experiment began with interested participants been told about the FDA’s conclusion of safety regarding food products from cloned animals. Then the Becker-de-Groot Marschak (BDM) mechanism was used to elicit subjects’ willingness to accept (WTA) milk that may or may not have come from cloned cows.
The mean WTA was $2.65, which according to the signed rank test was significantly different from zero. Consumers may thus be willing to consume milk that may have come from cloned cows only if they are compensated or, more likely, a price discount is available. To analyze WTA further, a two-limit tobit model, checked for heteroscedasticity, was run using the other collected survey variables. Results from the Tobit model showed that subjects who are likely to accept milk from cloned cows are those who do not consume conventional milk often and who do not have a negative opinion of animal cloning. Other attributes found among consumers who are more accepting of milk from cloned cows included the characteristic of not reading food labels very often, being a principal grocery shopper and not being very considerate of environmental factors when making food choices. On the demographic front, persons more accepting of milk from cloned cows were likely to be males, college graduates, high income earners and persons who did not live with children less than 18 years. The study found that subjects would register a consistent reduction in their welfare with successively increasing probabilities that the milk that may or may not have come from a cloned cow was actually from a cloned cow. Over 80% of subjects wanted milk from cloned cows labeled and about 65% wanted the product allowed.
Combining these findings suggest that consumers are not necessarily opposed to foods from cloned animals in the marketplace but rather simply want them to be an option that they can identify and then choose whether to consume that version or the conventional one.