Neary J M, Guthrie A P, Jacobs L
School of Animal Sciences, Virginia Tech, 175 West Campus Drive, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA.
Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA, 250 Drillfield Drive, 24061.
Anim Welf. 2023 Dec 22;32:e79. doi: 10.1017/awf.2023.99. eCollection 2023.
In the United States (US), surgical castration of male piglets is typically performed without any form of analgesia. This may raise concerns with the public; however, there is no information regarding current public knowledge on swine industry practices in the US. In this study we gained insight into public knowledge and perception on castration with and without analgesia in comparison to knowledge of industry stakeholders on these same topics. Through an online survey, 119 respondents were asked four questions about castration in the US swine industry. Industry respondents were contacted via social media and networking. The general public sample was accessed through Mechanical Turk. Survey responses were categorised by experience (industry vs public). Industry respondents were more aware of practices compared to the general public. Most public respondents were unaware of castration practices and the lack of analgesia use. Respondents from rural communities were more aware of castration practices than (sub)urban communities and more aware of analgesia use than those from urban communities. Those with more education had greater awareness of castration practices (occurrence not frequency). Based on the results from this first US sample, knowledge on industry practices was especially lacking for public respondents, but also for a minority of industry respondents, indicating opportunities for education and further research on the topic.
在美国，雄性仔猪的手术阉割通常在没有任何形式镇痛的情况下进行。这可能会引起公众的关注；然而，目前尚无关于美国公众对养猪业做法的了解情况的信息。在本研究中，我们深入了解了公众对于有镇痛和无镇痛阉割的知识及看法，并与行业利益相关者在这些相同主题上的知识进行了比较。通过一项在线调查，我们向119名受访者询问了四个关于美国养猪业阉割的问题。行业受访者是通过社交媒体和人脉联系的。普通公众样本是通过亚马逊土耳其机器人平台获取的。调查回复按经验（行业与公众）进行了分类。与普通公众相比，行业受访者对相关做法更为了解。大多数公众受访者不知道阉割做法以及缺乏镇痛措施的使用情况。农村社区的受访者比（城郊）社区的受访者更了解阉割做法，并且比城市社区的受访者更了解镇痛措施的使用情况。受教育程度较高的人对阉割做法（发生率而非频率）有更高的认知度。基于美国首个样本的结果，公众受访者以及少数行业受访者尤其缺乏对行业做法的了解，这表明在该主题上存在开展教育和进一步研究的机会。
