One in two people living in Finland would be willing to pay an additional 10 percent for dairy and meat products if it included a guarantee that the animal had been treated well, according to the results of a survey commissioned by the farmer union's daily Maaseudun Tulevaisuus.
Furthermore, eight percent of survey respondents said they would be willing to pay up to one and a half times the current price of a product if it came with an animal welfare guarantee.
However, a quarter of respondents said they would not be willing to pay more for a welfare-labelled product than for a product that did not have such a guarantee.
The survey results also suggested that the issue of animal welfare is more important to women in Finland than to men, with less than 20 percent of women answering that they would not pay an additional price for a product that guaranteed the animal’s well-being.
The corresponding figure for men was just over 30 percent.
The research organisation Kantar TNS Agri conducted the survey during early October by interviewing more than 1,000 respondents from different age groups across Finland.