Conserving Biodiversity in Farm Animals: Do Farmer and Public Biodiversity Knowledge and Awareness Matter?

ABSTRACT

Increases in biodiversity losses are a growing concern globally. In farm animals, related concerns about losses in genetic diversity have potentially increased with the emergence of breeding technologies that allow for faster genetic change in herds. Farmer and public acceptance of specific breeding practices can be influenced by a number of factors, including concerns about biodiversity and knowledge of biodiversity. The link between these factors and acceptance of new genetic technologies, if it exists, may help explain concerns about genetic technologies. This article examines the effect of attitudes and knowledge about biodiversity on the acceptance of genomic selection in livestock production using farmer and public survey data from Canada. Our results suggest that the link between biodiversity concerns and the acceptance of genomic selection is more robust for the public than for farmers. We also find that biodiversity knowledge and attitudes have opposite effects on acceptance of genomic selection.

KEYWORDS:

• Awareness
• biodiversity
• farmer
• genomics
• knowledge
• public

Acknowledgments

We thank Livestock Gentec for their technical support and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

The public survey included a 6th option coded “I don’t know”.

“Don’t knows” are coded as zeros.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Genome Canada [Grant Number RES0011900], and Genome Alberta [Grant Number RES0013126].