I think your drawing the wrong conclusion, with your long bow. The major animal husbandry difference between Europe and here or even Kiwiland, is that for too much of the year , the animals in Europe are housed inside, as opposed to outside in Australasia.
In order to achieve a livestock sector that is more in line with values hold by many people from the public, husbandry systems need to be re-evaluated and adjusted in the long-run. It seems to be very clear that “ongoing research is needed to (…) provide grounded information to guide industry decisions” (Tonsor, this issue). Busch and Spiller (this issue) reveal a high preference for animals having outdoor access or the other way round: a strong rejection of pictures of indoor housing systems indicating a high value of naturalness from a public point of view. Sumner et al. (this issue) state that “public concerns about welfare are often related to natural living”. Pointing into the same direction, Bos et al. (this issue) reveal that outdoor access is of central importance to Dutch consumers leading to a significantly higher willingness-to-pay for products deriving from such systems compared to indoor improvements. Nonetheless, such systems are far away from production realities on a larger scale.
