Filiep Vanhonacker

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at Ghent University

Consumers have increasing, but highly variable, interest in sustainability attributes of food, including ethical aspects, such as animal welfare. We explored market opportunities for animal-friendly cow’s milk based on segmentation (cluster) analysis. Flemish survey participants (n = 787) were clustered (n = 6) based on their intention to purchase...

Abstract published in ’Proceedings of the 50th Congress of the International Society for Applied Ethology’. Different consumer segments’ interest in information about dairy cattle welfare measures Sophie de Graaf1, 2, Filiep Vanhonacker1, Jo Bijttebier2, Ludwig Lauwers2, Frank Tuyttens2, Wim Verbeke1 1Ghent University, Coupure links 653, 9000 Ghent...

Concern about the welfare of production animals is growing among various stakeholders, including the general public. Citizens can influence the market for premium welfare products by expressing public concerns, and consumers—the actors who actually purchase products—can do so through their purchasing behavior. However, current market shares for pre...

New EU regulations require more stringent country-of-origin labeling, while imports of broiler meat from non-EU countries are increasing. In light of these trends, we have studied citizens’ and producers’ perceptions of broiler meat originating from Belgium versus Brazil and their perception of broiler production in Belgium versus Brazil. A particu...

This chapter presents how European consumers define and perceive traditional foods based on consumer research performed within the EU-funded project Truefood. The insights were obtained through focus group studies, free word association tests, and cross-European quantitative consumer surveys. Consumers’ definition of traditional foods refers primar...

This study evaluates the influence of practical experience with alternatives for surgical castration (SC) on farmer attitudes. Nineteen farmers in Flanders were surveyed before (ex-ante) and after (ex-post) performing each of five treatments on farm: 1) SC with analgesia (SCAN); 2) SC with CO2 anaesthesia (SCCO2); 3) immunocastration (IM); 4) produ...

The aim of this paper is to provide up-to-date information about the status of broiler production in Flanders (the northern region of Belgium) and the opinion of Flemish broiler producers on animal welfare. Our review revealed that intensification of Flemish broiler production has continued, as characterised by a decreasing number of production pla...

Purpose - Experimental auctions are widely used as a non-hypothetical value elicitation method to examine consumer preferences for novel, controversial foods. However, despite its advantages over hypothetical methods, its practice might lead to a wide variety of biases. The purpose of this paper is to provide a list of key cognitive biases and desi...

The objective of this elicitation study is to provide insights into farmers’ beliefs which influence their participation in knowledge exchange and innovation networks to enable the enhancement of network participation. A set of facilitating and impeding factors was obtained. Participants identified (a) 13 categories of behavioural beliefs (e.g. ‘Yo...

Increasing fish demand has made aquaculture a necessary complement of fisheries. Consumer acceptance is crucial for market success of aquaculture produce. The present study has investigated the image European consumers have in relation to farmed fish, wild fish, fish as a generic food category and seabass and seabream as the two main cultured speci...

Farm animal welfare in livestock production is a topical and important issue attracting growing interest of policy makers, consumers, stakeholders in the supply chain and others. While there is much public interest in the issue this is not reflected in the supply and market shares of animal food products that are produced under welfare standards th...

Purpose This study aims to investigate consumers' perceptions and barriers in relation to fresh, frozen, preserved and ready‐meal fish products in a geographically diverse selection of European countries. Design/methodology/approach Cross‐sectional data were collected through a consumer survey ( n =3,213), conducted in June 2008 in the Czech Repub...

Current western food consumption is associated with a high ecological impact. A way to reduce this impact is to shift to more sustainable food choices. This study investigates consumer attitudes towards more sustainable food choices. The alternatives under study range from well-known meat substitutes to alternatives which are more radical or innova...

Traditional food products (TFPs) are an important element of human culture, identity and heritage. However, their production still relies on traditional manufacturing practices, often with low competitiveness, efficiency and R&D investment. The introduction of innovations could help producers to increase the market share of TFP, although some innov...

Experimental auctions are widely used as a value elicitation method to examine consumer preferences for novel, controversial food products. In particular, they have been successfully applied to GM foods and GM crops with health benefits (biofortification) in particular. Despite the increase of interest towards this methodology, and the advantages o...

Several attempts to conceptualize farm animal welfare have been criticized for diverging reasons, among them often the failure to incorporate the public concern and opinion. This paper’s objective is to develop a conception of farm animal welfare that starts from the public’s perception and integrates the opinion of different stakeholder representa...

Stocking density is a prominent topic in public debates on animal welfare and was one of the reasons for the European Commission to set limits to the stocking density on broiler farms. The objective of this paper was to calculate in detail the financial impact of changes in technical and management variables due to decreasing stocking densities in...

Consumers in many European countries do not equally meet the recommended daily intake levels for fish consumption. Various factors that can influence fish consumption behaviour have been identified but limited research has been performed on fish consumption behaviour, discriminating between farmed and wild fish. The present survey study confirmed d...

In most European countries, male piglets being reared for meat are physically castrated without anaesthesia in order to avoid boar taint and to safeguard sensory meat quality. This method is increasingly criticised for its violation of piglet welfare. Alternative methods are being researched and castration with anaesthesia or analgesia and vaccinat...

A group of 160 Flemish pig farmers (n=160) were surveyed about their attitude towards surgical castration with anaesthesia (SCA) and without (SCN), immunocastration (IC), sperm sexing (SS) and the production of entire males (EM). The farmers' general preference was recorded as SCN>SS>SCA=IC>EM. The farmers' self-reported knowledge of the strategies...

Purpose - This study aims to gain insights into the relevance and market potential of fish origin (farmed or wild) among consumers in Belgium, Norway and Spain. Design/methodology/approach - Cross-sectional data were collected through a consumer survey (n = 1,319), conducted in November-December 2007 in three European countries: Belgium, Norway an...

This study examines traditional food chain goals and explores the match with general consumer perceptions and preferences in relation to traditional food as a food product category. Chain goals were selected using focus group discussions and in-depth interviews (84 chain members, three European countries, five traditional food categories), as well...

Pork consumers know little about boar taint and the methods used to avoid it. As such, relevant information is necessary to assist consumers to judge the acceptability of different strategies to avoid boar taint. The effect of basic (T1) or extensive (T2) written information or T2 with supplementary audio-visual information (AV) on the opinion conc...

This paper studies the image of traditional food at pan-European and national levels in six countries: Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Poland and Spain. A consumer survey about traditional food products (TFP) was conducted. The respondents (n = 4828) indicated their personal general opinion and feelings about TFP and characterised TFP according to...

The results of two independent empirical studies with Flemish citizens were combined to address the problem of a short fall of information provision about higher welfare products. The research objectives were (1) to improve our understanding of how citizens conceptualize farm animal welfare, (2) to analyze the variety in the claimed personal releva...

Traditional food products are subject to an increased interest in Europe. Innovations, though controversial in the context of traditional food, are essential to maximally cope with this opportunity. So far, only few studies have concentrated on innovation in the traditional food sector. In this paper sector and consumer data are combined in order t...

Within the European food market, traditional food products (TFP) represent a growing segment. Nonetheless, European consumers' definition and perception of TFP have not been thoroughly addressed thus far. The specific aim of this study was to provide an all-embracing consumer definition of the concept of TFP that is comfortable for the largest poss...

Purpose - The paper seeks to provide a picture of the profile of European traditional food consumers (TFC) in terms of their socio-demographics, attitudes, life-style orientations and behavioural characteristics. Design/methodology/approach - Cross-sectional data were collected through a pan-European consumer survey (a = 4,828) conducted in Novembe...

The Welfare Quality® project has developed an operational definition of farm animal welfare, which consists of 12 criteria grouped into four principles (‘good feeding’, ‘good housing’, ‘good health’ and ‘appropriate behaviour’). As part of a larger survey, 204 farmers, 72 vegetarians, and a representative sample of 459 adult citizens in Flanders (B...

This study investigated the effect of balanced, nonpersuasive information related to safety, healthiness, and sustainability of aquaculture on the image of farmed fish among European consumers. It was demonstrated that there is neither positive nor negative influence of this type of information on the predominantly positive image of fish from aquac...

This study's objective was to segment Belgian fish consumers based on their motives, perceived barriers, and their risk perception corresponding with fish consumption. Cross-sectional consumer data were collected in November 2004 through a self-administered questionnaire (n = 852). Cluster analysis distinguished between three consumer segments. Unc...

A total of 721 consumers were interviewed in order to obtain and compare consumer-driven associations to the word “Traditional”, in a food context, in six European regions. Participants, who were individually interviewed, had to state the first words that came into their mind when the word “Traditional” was verbally presented. Frequencies of occurr...

Organizations no longer compete as independent entities, but as chains (Christopher, 1998; Cox, 1999; Lambert, Cooper, 2000). Consequently, chain strategies became more important in creating competitive advantage (Vickery et al., 2003; Gunasekaran et al., 2004). Despite the growing recognition of the importance of chain strategies, many chains acti...

A substantial number of studies has already investigated differences within the consumer market with regard to attitudes and perceptions in relation to farm animal welfare. Likewise, several studies focused on the gap that exists between positive attitudes and reported consumption or purchase intentions for sustainable food products in general and...

In the vast majority of European countries, piglets are surgically castrated in order to eliminate the risk of boar taint, an odour or flavour that can be present when pork from entire males is cooked. However, surgical castration is the subject of much debate and criticism as a result of its negative implications for piglets' welfare, integrity an...

Farm animal welfare has become increasingly important and relevant from the societal point of view throughout the livestock production chain, with space allowance for farm animals being one of its most topical and vividly debated sub-matters. Anticipating on the increasing power of the citizens' voice in Western society, this study focuses on socie...

This study investigates the association between traditional food consumption and motives for food choice in six European countries. Cross-sectional data were collected through the TRUEFOOD pan-European consumer survey (n = 4828) with samples representative for age, gender and region in Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Poland and Spain. Importance at...

Traditional food products (TFP) are an important part of European culture, identity, and heritage. In order to maintain and expand the market share of TFP, further improvement in safety, health, or convenience is needed by means of different innovations. The aim of this study was to obtain a consumer-driven definition for the concept of TFP and inn...

This paper provides a consumer-driven definition of traditional food products (TFP) and investigates the image European consumers have about this food product category. Data were collected from representative consumer samples in six European countries, including Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Poland and Spain, with a total sample size of 4,828 par...

Communicating about the health effects of fish and seafood may potentially result in a conflict situation: increasing intake is desirable because of health and nutritional benefits, but higher consumption may also lead to an increased intake of potentially harmful environmental contaminants. In order to anticipate the communication challenge this c...

Animal welfare is of increasing importance in livestock production and consumption debates. However, discordance exists between citizens' and farmers' perception of animal welfare. Since the search for, and the realization of improvements towards farm animal welfare is strongly driven by citizen expectations, it is of utmost importance to better un...

Seafood represents a natural source of valuable nutrients (e.g., long chain omega-3 poly-unsaturated fatty acids (LC n-3 PUFAs), vitamin D, and iodine), but the favourable health perception is troubled by the presence of contaminants (e.g., PCBs, dioxin-like compounds, and (methyl) mercury (MeHg)). This dualism forms the basis for an important publ...

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Although sustainability and ethics are of increasing public importance, little research has been conducted to reveal its association with fish consumer behavior. Cross-sectional data were collected through a postal self-administered survey (June 2005) from a sample of 381 Flemish women aged 20-50 years. Consumers attach high perceived importance to...

Animal welfare is a complex and multidimensional concept and there is little consensus about how it ought to be defined. This project aims to develop a definition of farm animal welfare based both on science and on consensus among citizens and stakeholders such that animal welfare becomes a more workable concept in politics and society. The study c...

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