THE VALUE OF FARM ANIMAL WELFARE
用经济学框架分析公众对农场动物福利的担忧如何影响社会效用，探讨了评估动物福利价值的方法及相关政策问题。
This paper explores further some of the ideas put forward by McInerney (1993) in his economic perspective of animal welfare. It uses a simple economic framework to consider citizens' concerns and perceptions about farm animal welfare and the production and consumption of livestock products in society. People's perceptions that certain aspects of livestock production give rise to poor farm animal welfare are a potential source of disutility for them. This disutility may be associated with people's own consumption of livestock products and/or with other people's consumption. The latter is a negative externality of consumption in society, resulting in very real indirect costs associated with livestock production. The paper discusses the need for valuing farm animal welfare, considers techniques for evaluation and highlights some of the policy issues involved.