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When is the problem truly ‘solved’? Australian public attitudes towards future scenarios addressing early life killing of surplus dairy calves Bolton, Sarah; Sirovica, Lara; von Keyserlingk, Marina

Description

To better understand factors that contribute to social acceptability of surplus dairy calf management, we conducted a survey of the Australian public. Participants’ attitudes were more favorable towards future scenarios where, as an alternative to being killed in the first days of life, surplus calves were raised for beef at pasture. Participants were less favorable towards scenarios where the animals were raised in a feedlot. Our results indicate that while directing surplus calves away from early life killing is an important first step, attention should also be paid to public acceptance of how animals are managed in beef production systems.

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Title	When is the problem truly ‘solved’? Australian public attitudes towards future scenarios addressing early life killing of surplus dairy calves
Creator	Bolton, Sarah; Sirovica, Lara; von Keyserlingk, Marina
Contributor	Bolton, Sarah
Date Issued	2026-01-19
Description	To better understand factors that contribute to social acceptability of surplus dairy calf management, we conducted a survey of the Australian public. Participants’ attitudes were more favorable towards future scenarios where, as an alternative to being killed in the first days of life, surplus calves were raised for beef at pasture. Participants were less favorable towards scenarios where the animals were raised in a feedlot. Our results indicate that while directing surplus calves away from early life killing is an important first step, attention should also be paid to public acceptance of how animals are managed in beef production systems.
Subject	Agricultural Sciences; Social Sciences; welfare; beef; veal; pasture; feedlot; policy
Type	Dataset
Date Available	2026-01-14
Provider	University of British Columbia Library
License	CC-BY 4.0
DOI	10.14288/1.0451316
URI	https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/0CVJRZ
Publisher DOI	https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/0CVJRZ
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Aggregated Source Repository	Dataverse

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CC-BY 4.0