An Exploration of Ethical Consumers' Response to 'Animal Friendly' Apparel Labelling

ABSTRACT An emerging social ethic for animal welfare that seeks to improve the welfare of animals in industrial farming is evident in the growing demand for products perceived to be 'animal friendly'. Research examining consumer response to 'animal friendly' products has focused on the food product category despite the extensive use of animal fibres, fur, and skins in the production of clothing and textiles. How consumers respond to animal welfare issues in the clothing and textile product category is of particular interest to animal production industries. This paper explores ethical consumers' response to 'animal friendly' labelling of wool apparel. Five focus group interviews were conducted with American female ethical consumers to elicit beliefs and attitudes towards social labels applied to wool apparel that incorporate animal welfare principles. The focus group data indicated that consumers' beliefs about social labels, in terms of perceived credibility, transparency, and relevance of the label to the product, influence their attitude towards the label and subsequent purchase intentions. Further, it appeared that consumer beliefs about the ethical issue(s) articulated by social labels influence consumer attitudes and purchase intentions. ARTICLE Introduction Over the past forty years, society has grown increasingly concerned about the treatment of farm animals due to changing demographics, a questioning of accepted human traditions, changes in the nature of animal use, and changes in agricultural production practices. Hence there have been calls for tougher animal welfare legislation and the proliferation of new laws across the Western world limiting what people can do to animals (Rollin 2006). In the European Union, for example, legislation requires larger cages for laying hens from 2012 and prohibits the use of sow gestation stalls from 2013. In Australia, the Tasmanian government announced the phasing out of the use of sow stalls from 2010, with a total ban on their use coming in to force in 2017.1 Changes in the social ethic for animal welfare are also reflected in consumer activism, including an increase in demand for products perceived to be more 'animal friendly'. For example, studies have found that consumers were willing to purchase eggs produced with animal-friendly management practices (Bennett 1997; Rolfe 1999). Such research identified consumers' concerns about the welfare of caged layer hens, which has, in turn, influenced legislators to increase cage sizes in the European Union. However, most studies investigating consumer response to animal welfare and 'animal friendly' products have focused on food items, despite the extensive use of animal fibres,2 fur, and skins in the production of clothing and textiles. How consumers respond to animal welfare issues in the clothing and textile product categories is of particular interest to animal production industries, such as the Australian wool industry, which has been the target of anti-cruelty activism and retail boycotts. Wool is an important apparel fibre that generates retail sales of approximately US$75 billion a year for the clothing and textile industry (Millward Brown Pty Ltd 2007). Wool has the largest share of the animal fibre market and Australia is the largest supplier of apparel wool, producing 46% of wool fibre used in clothing production in 2004. The Australian wool industry has been the target of a highly publicised anti-cruelty campaign. In 2004, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) launched an international retail and consumer campaign ('Save the Sheep'3) against the Australian sheep industry, calling for an end to the live export of sheep from Australia and to the 'barbaric' practice of mulesing lambs. Mulesing4 is a 'one-off' surgical procedure performed on-farm to remove wool-bearing skin from the breech area of lambs in order to prevent flystrike5. Mulesing has traditionally been performed on sheep in Australia without anaesthetic or analgesics. …