Appetite. U.S. consumers attitudes toward farm animal cloning. Kathleen R. Brooks a, *, Jayson L. Lusk b. Research report

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1 Appetite 57 (2011) Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Appetite jo u rn al h om epag e: ww w.els evier.c o m/lo cat e/app et Research report U.S. consumers attitudes toward farm animal cloning Kathleen R. Brooks a, *, Jayson L. Lusk b a Department of Agricultural Sciences, West Texas A&M University, Canyon, TX 79016, United States b Department of Agricultural Economics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, United States A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 15 December 2010 Received in revised form 20 June 2011 Accepted 22 June 2011 Keywords: Animal cloning Ground beef Milk Paired comparison A B S T R A C T In January 2008, the United States Food and Drug Administration concluded meat and milk from cattle, swine, and goat clones or their offspring are as safe to eat as food we eat from those species now (U.S. FDA, 2010). However, cloning remains a very controversial topic. A web-based survey administered by Knowledge Networks was used to determine U.S. consumers awareness of and attitudes toward meat and milk from cloned cattle. Findings reveal consumers do not differentiate much between products from cloned animals and products from non-cloned animals. Overall consumers are concerned that animal cloning is an unnatural process and that it will lead to human cloning. ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Assisted reproductive technologies have been utilized by farmers and ranchers for decades with little controversy. For example, commercial embryo transfers have occurred in the beef and dairy cattle industries since the 1970s (Mapletoft & Hasler, 2005). Nevertheless, the relatively new reproductive technique of animal cloning has sparked controversy. Animal cloning is a complex process by which scientists copy the genetic or inherited traits of an animal. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the process most often used in animal cloning (Vjata & Gjerris, 2006). Cloning is a controversial topic. Like many assisted reproductive technologies it is appealing to ranchers and farmers because it enables them to more quickly breed desirable traits into their herds (Paterson, DeSousa, Ritchie, King, & Wilmut, 2003). Genetic improvements allow producers to potentially lower prices, increase the quality of meat and milk products, and possibly increase resistance to diseases (Lewis et al., 2004; Paterson et al., 2003; Wall et al., 2005). However, many have expressed concern over the technology and outrage over the use of meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring (Mellman Group, 2006; Zhang & Jargo, 2008). These consumers and animal welfare Authors are assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Sciences at West Texas A&M University and professor and Willard Sparks Endowed Chair in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University, respectively. The authors are grateful to the USDA-ERS who provided funding to collect the data involved in this research and two journal reviewers for helpful comments on the article. * Corresponding author. address: kbrooks@wtamu.edu (K.R. Brooks). organizations oppose the technology due to moral and ethical objections and concerns about food safety and potential harm to the cloned animals and their surrogate mothers (Mellman Group, 2006; Storey, 2006). Currently in the United States there are several companies that are selling cloning services (e.g. Viagen, and Trans Ova) and according to the USDA (2008) there are approximately 600 animal clones in the U.S. primarily used for breeding. In order to determine if meat and milk products from cloned animals are safe to eat, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) conducted a detailed study and analysis. In January 2008, the FDA concluded that meat and milk from cattle, swine, and goat clones or their offspring are as safe to eat as food we eat from those species now (U.S. FDA, 2010). According to the Wall Street Journal, several food manufacturers and retailers including Kraft, Wal-Mart, and Tyson, have been reported to pledge to refrain from selling meat and milk from cloned animals due to reactions to opinion polls and pressures of activist groups despite the FDA s conclusions (Zhang & Jargo, 2008). Some previous opinion polls have been conducted on the issue of animal cloning. The International Food Information Council (IFIC) conducted a study in 2008 in which they surveyed 1000 U.S. adults and weighted the survey data against the U.S. Census. IFIC reported that about 45% of Americans hold unfavorable impressions of cloning which has decreased from 57% in 2005 (IFIC, 2008). However the same study showed that even with the high unfavorable impressions, about 48% of consumers would purchase meat, milk, or eggs from the offspring of cloned animals which increased from only 36% in A similar survey by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology in 2004 found that 29% of /$ see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi: /j.appet

2 484 K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) consumers indicated that they would purchase meat and milk from the offspring of cloned animals, but 35% indicated that they would never buy milk from the offspring of cloned animals (Mellman Group, 2006). The Pew study also reported that about 65% of consumers had heard about animal cloning. Although these opinion polls indicate most consumers have heard about animal cloning, other studies have found consumers to be somewhat uncomfortable with the technology. Storey (2006) found 32% of consumers felt animal cloning was morally wrong and 26% were unsure of the safety of meat and milk from clones and their offspring. A KRC research study in 2005 found that consumers found cloning more acceptable if it improved the overall health of animals, improved nutrition of meat and milk, and saved rare animal breeds (Sosin & Richards, 2005). Most of these previous opinion polls simply asked people to indicate purchase intentions or attitudes on a five-point scale. A wealth of evidence indicates such data often poorly predicts actual retail behavior (Morrison, 1979; Morwitz, 1997). Furthermore, such scales do not force people to make trade-offs between concerns, and as such, it is common for people to rate many issues as very important. Bauer (2002) finds that opinion polls on controversial topics like biotechnology are just one step in finding out consumers preferences. The current paper utilizes bestworst or paired comparison questions to determine the relative degree of concern for cloning and to determine which issues are most unacceptable to consumers (see Lusk & Briggeman, 2009 for a recent use of these methods in the agricultural economics literature). The overall objectives of this study are to determine consumers awareness of and attitudes toward meat and milk from cloned cattle. Data and methods Knowledge Networks (KN) was contracted to administer a web-based survey to their panel of respondents in the summer of KN administered the survey to a sample that was selected using random digit dialing techniques, and as, such represents a true probability sample based on the general U.S. population. Although KN uses a web-based platform, representativeness is ensured by providing randomly selected respondents with computers and on-line access if they do not already have it. Thus, the panel is comprised of both Internet and non- Internet households, all of which are provided the same equipment for participation in Internet surveys. In June 2008, the survey was sent to 3222 individuals, 2256 of whom completed at least a portion of the questions, implying a response rate of 70%. This sample size implies a sampling error of about 2.06%. That is, we can be 95% confident that the sampled percentage of people falling in a particular category is within 2.06% of the true percentage of people in the particular category in population. Table 1 reports the raw (unweighted) and weighted means for selected socio-economic and demographic variables describing the survey respondents. After the survey was conducted, post-stratification weights created by iterative proportional fitting techniques were used to reduce the effects of nonresponse and non-coverage bias in panel estimates. This is primarily accomplished by comparing the geographic location and demographic characteristics (age, race, gender, and education) of the sample to the most recent data from the U.S. census bureau, Current Population Survey, 2007 Annual Social and Economic Supplement. The weights were constructed using the raking 1 More information on the Knowledge Network panel, recruitment methodology, studies comparing the KN panel to other sampling techniques, and a bibliography of published academic papers which have employed the KN panel can be found at macro developed and discussed in Izrael, Hoaglin, and Battaglia (2000, 2004). These post-stratification weights are used in all results presented in this report. The raw sample is overall diverse and matches up well with the U.S. population as can be seen by the slight differences in the weighted and unweighted means. Approximately 49% of survey respondents were female and 68.8% were the primary household shopper. The average age was 50 years old with about 31% having a bachelor s degree or higher education level. All subjects were provided information about cloning technology (the exact information statement is provided in Appendix A). To help control for a shock effect from hearing about a potentially new technology, one half of the sample received the information one week prior to taking the survey and the other half received it only at the time the survey was taken. Because we found virtually identical results across the two treatments, the data is pooled in all the analysis reported here except for the survey questions relating to the awareness of animal breeding. Awareness of animal breeding The survey contained a series of five simple questions designed to gauge people s knowledge and awareness of five assisted reproduction technologies that are sometimes used to breed animals for meat and milk production: artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, biotechnology, embryo transfer, and cloning. These reproductive technologies are the ones that are used by IFIC when conducting their food biotechnology survey each year (IFIC, 2008). People were asked, Overall, how much have you heard or read about each of the following assisted reproduction technologies that are sometimes used to breed animals for meat and milk production? Response categories were: 1 = nothing at all, 2 = a little, 3 = a moderate amount, 4 = quite a bit, and 5 = a great deal. General questions related to animal cloning Respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with 20 statements related to animal cloning and government involvement in animal cloning. Examples of statements appearing in this section included: I am willing to eat meat from cloned animals, I am willing to consume milk products from cloned animals, and I trust the U.S. government to properly regulate the use of animal cloning. People were asked to respond to each statement on a five-point scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree. Each of the 20 statements was randomly ordered across surveys. Relative importance of competing objections to animal cloning The survey also had a section designed to identify the motivations behind people s underlying concerns about animal cloning. The idea is to identify a set of objections that relate specifically to people s concerns for animal cloning. A paired comparison elicitation approach (Thurstone, 1927) popularized through conceptual advances in best-worst scaling (Marley & Louviere, 2005) was utilized to determine relative importance of the competing objections to animal cloning. The advantage of this approach (over, say, responses to simple Likert scale questions) is that people are forced to indicate their relative degree of concern (i.e., not all issues can be most important), making inter-personal comparisons less problematic (i.e., there is only one way to make a choice), and the measured levels of concern can be easily stated on a ratio scale (Lee, Soutar, & Louviere, 2007; Marley & Louviere, 2005).

3 K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) Table 1 Characteristics of survey respondents. Variable Definition Mean Weighted mean Age Age in years Treatment a 1 if treatment 1; 0 if treatment Gender 1 if female; 0 if male Income Annual household income in $1000s Internet 1 if household internet access; 0 otherwise No HS 1 if less than high school; 0 otherwise HS 1 if high school; 0 otherwise Some college 1 if some college; 0 otherwise Bachelors 1 if Bachelor s degree or higher; 0 otherwise White 1 if white, non-hispanic; 0 otherwise Black 1 if black, non-hispanic; 0 otherwise Other 1 if other non-hispanic; 0 otherwise Hispanic 1 if hispanic; 0 otherwise Two-races 1 if 2+races, non-hispanic; 0 otherwise Northeast 1 if in Northeast U.S Census Region; 0 otherwise Midwest 1 if in Midwest U.S Census Region; 0 otherwise South 1 if in South U.S Census Region; 0 otherwise West 1 if in West U.S Census Region; 0 otherwise Meat: never 1 if never purchase meat; 0 otherwise Meat: yearly 1 if purchase meat a few times a year; 0 otherwise Meat: monthly 1 if purchase meat about once a month; 0 otherwise Meat: weekly 1 if purchase meat about once a week; 0 otherwise Meat: day 1 if purchase meat every day; 0 otherwise Farm 1 if own/work on ranch/farm; 0 otherwise Pshopper 1 if primary shopper for food; 0 otherwise Child 1 if child under age of 12 in household; 0 otherwise a In treatment 1, respondents received an information statement about cloning one week prior to taking the survey and received the statement again while taking the survey; in treatment 2, respondents only received the information statement while taking the survey. To begin this section of the survey, people were told the following. Some people are in favor of animal cloning and some people object to the practice. We are interested in your opinions about a few of the objections that some people have about animal cloning. For each of the following questions, please indicate which of the two statements best describes your views toward animal cloning. We recognize that, in some cases, you may not particularly agree with either statement; however, please choose which of the two statements best matches your views. Then, people were asked eight repeated questions of the form, Which of the following two statements best describes your views toward animal cloning? X or Y. The two statements X and Y were randomly selected from the following list of 8 issues: Animal cloning is morally wrong Meat and milk from clones and their offspring is unsafe to eat Animal cloning will lead to human cloning Cloning will result in unhealthy farm animals Cloning is unnatural because it is not a process that occurs in nature Cloning will reduce genetic diversity to an unacceptable level Cloning results in animals being viewed as objects to be produced as opposed to being valuable in and of themselves The scientists and biotechnology companies who developed cloning technology cannot be trusted to look out for my best interest. For example, one question might have been, Which of the following two statements best describes your views toward animal cloning? Animal cloning is morally wrong or Meat and milk from clones and their offspring is unsafe to eat. In total, there are (8 8 8)/2 = 28 possible questions that can be created representing all possible pairs of the issues listed above. Each person randomly received 8 of these pairings and made discrete choices of which statement best described their view toward animal cloning. When responding to each discrete choice question, people can be conceptualized as choosing the item that is highest on an underlying scale of importance. Formally, let a j represent the location of value j on the underlying scale of importance, and let the true or latent unobserved level of importance for individual i be given by I ij = a j + e ij, where e ij is a random error term. The probability that the consumer chooses, say, item j over item k, as most important is the probability that I ij is greater than I ik. If the e ij are distributed logistically, then this probability takes the familiar logit form. In particular, in each choice set, an individual chose whether issue j or issue k was more important. The probability that issue j is more important than issue k is: e bþa j Prob½issue j is more important than issue kš ¼ e bþa j þ e bþa ; (1) k where a j and a k are parameters identifying the relative importance of issue j and issue k, and b is an overall constant term that corresponds to an order effect (i.e., the propensity to choose the objection presented first in the pairing). In a sample of N individuals making C choices, with each choice involving a differing pairing of objections, the log-likelihood function is Log L ¼ XN X C i¼1 c¼1 yi jc Þ ln y i jc ln e bþa j! e bþa j þ e bþa þ ð1 k e bþa! k ; (2) e bþa j þ e bþa k where y ijc = 1 if issue j is chosen by individual i as most important in choice set c, and where y ijc = 0 if issue k is chosen by individual i as most important in choice set c. In this framework, one of the eight parameters must be normalized to zero for identification purposes, and as such we arbitrarily selected the value the scientists and biotechnology companies who developed cloning

4 486 K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) technology cannot be trusted to look out for my best interest and normalized the parameter to zero such that the estimated effect of the other issues can be interpreted as the importance of the particular value relative to the importance of the scientists and biotechnology companies who developed cloning technology cannot be trusted to look out for my best interest. To ease interpretation and to provide a measurement of the importance of the 8 issues on a ratio scale, the parameters obtained from Eq. (2) are substituted into the multinomial logit formula to calculate shares of preference or importance scores which indicate, of the 8 issues, the percentage of people that would choose issue j as most important as shown in Eq. (3): Importance score ¼ Share of people believing issue e a j is most important ¼ P J : (3) k¼1 ea k The importance scores take the form of probabilities, and thus the sum of the estimated importance scores across all 8 issues must equal 100. If two issues (say issues A and B) are roughly equivalent in importance to respondents, roughly half the subjects will say Issue A is more important and half will say Issue B is more important. The importance score calculation will then assign an identical number (50%) to both issues. Conversely, if Issue A is deemed more important by 750 individuals, and Issue B deemed more important by 250 people, the importance score calculation will assign an importance score to Issue A of 75% and an importance score to Issue B of 25%: thus, Issue A is three times as important as Issue B. Therefore, the importance scores assigned to each issue reflects the percentage of times that issue was considered to better match people s views than other issues. Because these probability statements are on a ratio scale, they can be compared proportionally. That is, if Issue A s importance score is two times larger than Issue B, then Issue A is twice as important as Issue B. The logit model described in Eq. (1) assumes that all individuals in the sample, place the same level of importance on each issue (i.e., there is no i subscript on a j ). A random parameters logit model (RPL) can be estimated to overcome this weakness of the logit. In particular, let the importance parameter for individual i and issue j be specified as ã i j ¼ ã j þ s j m i j into Eq. (1) yields a probability statement that depends on the random term in m ij. Following Train (2003), the model was estimated via simulation rather than attempting to explicitly integrate over these random terms. In particular, the parameters were estimated by maximizing a simulated log-likelihood function, evaluated at 100 pseudorandom Halton draws for m ij. The random draws are individual specific, which takes into consideration the panel nature of the data resulting from the fact that each person answered 8 repeated choice questions. Results Awareness of animal breeding Table 2 reports people s stated awareness of assisted reproduction technologies that are used to breed animals for meat and milk production. Overall, respondents indicated that they have heard or read more about cloning than any of the other techniques. For example, in the sample that did not receive prior information, 2 only 14% had never heard about animal cloning, whereas 47% had 2 Note that the information statement about animal cloning was not given in the survey until after the questions regarding awareness of animal breeding techniques had been completed. never heard of embryo transfer, 36% had never heard of biotechnology used to breed animals, 32% had never heard of in vitro fertilization, and 25% had never heard about artificial insemination. Not surprisingly, providing people information about animal cloning one week prior to administration of the survey significantly increased awareness of this and several other reproductive technologies at the time of the survey. Likert scale questions related to animal cloning Tables 3 5 report the results of the Likert scale questions related to animal cloning. Table 3 reports the extent to which people agreed or disagreed with statements about willingness to consume and purchase cloned meat and milk. 3 There was virtually no difference in willingness to eat meat and willingness to drink milk from cloned animals. Approximately, 31% were willing to eat meat and drink milk from cloned animals, whereas 43 44% indicated that they were not. Respondents did not indicate a difference between meat/milk from clones and the meat/milk from the offspring of clones. A little more than 40% of respondents indicated that they would likely alter their consumption of meat and milk if they learned that the products came from cloned animals while about 33% indicated they would not. Our findings are similar to those obtained by previous opinion polls conducted on the issue. For example, our estimate on willingness-to-eat falls in between the findings from a KRC research study that indicated only 35% of respondents would never buy meat from the offspring of a cloned animal (Sosin & Richards, 2005), and an IFIC (2008) study reported that 52% of consumers said they were either not too likely or not at all likely to purchase meat, milk, or eggs from cloned animals. Table 3 also reports the result of an indirect question. In particular, people were asked to indicate whether the average American was willing to eat meat from cloned animals. People indicated that they were more willing to eat meat from cloned animals (31%) as compared to the percentage of people who thought that the average American was willing to eat (21%). In previous research, we have argued that differences in direct and indirect questioning are likely a result of a type of social desirability bias (see Lusk & Norwood, 2009a, 2009b, 2010). That is, people answer direct survey questions in a way to make themselves look good, but have no such motivation when answering questions about what they think others will do. The differences in direct and indirect questions observed here on cloning are much smaller than the differences we have observed on questions about organic food and animal welfare. Thus, relative to these other issues, social desirability bias appears to be of lesser concern for the issue of cloning. Nevertheless, results do suggest a slight tendency for people to over-state their acceptance of cloned meat, perhaps out of an attempt to portray themselves as more open to new technologies. Respondents also answered a series of agree/disagree questions related to statements about the safety and acceptability of cloned meat and milk. Table 4 shows that most people (57.5%) were unsure whether meat currently sold in grocery stores is from cloned animals, suggesting people exhibit a great deal of uncertainty about the technologies currently being used to breed livestock. About a quarter of the respondents thought no meat from cloned animals or their offspring was currently being sold in stores. Respondents were equally split on the acceptability of animal cloning, with about a third finding the practice acceptable, a 3 Providing respondents a week to digest information on animal cloning had no affect on stated willingness to eat cloned meat or milk. The answers given after a week of time to contemplate the information were no different than those given on the spot Thus, data across these two treatments is pooled.

5 K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) Table 2 Knowledge of assisted reproduction technologies that are used to breed animals for meat and milk production. Technology Pooled Treatment 1 prior information Treatment 2 no prior information P-value a Artificial insemination 2.43 (1.14) b 2.50 (1.15) 2.37 (1.13) 0.01 [22.9%] c [21.3%] [24.5%] In vitro fertilization 2.20 (1.08) 2.25 (1.09) 2.16 (1.06) 0.03 [29.8%] [28.1%] [31.5%] Biotechnology 2.04 (1.05) 2.05 (1.07) 2.04 (1.04) 0.89 [37.1%] [38.2%] [36.0%] Embryo transfer 1.90 (1.05) 1.94 (1.07) 1.86 (1.04) 0.08 [45.2%] [43.7%] [46.6%] Cloning 2.57 (1.03) 2.70 (1.03) 2.45 (1.01) <0.01 [10.6%] [7.1%] [14.09%] Number of observations 2,256 1,123 1,133 Note: response to question: Overall, how much have you heard or read about each of the following assisted reproduction technologies that are sometimes used to breed animals for meat and milk production? Response categories were: 1 = nothing at all, 2 = a little, 3 = a moderate amount, 4 = quite a bit, 5 = a great deal. a P-value from two-sample t-test that means are equivalent across treatments. b Numbers in parentheses () are standard deviations. c Numbers in brackets [] are the percentage of respondents indicating 1 = nothing at all. third finding the practice unacceptable, and a third neutral. Only about 21% believed that animal cloning would result in beneficial outcomes for them. People were equally split on the safety of cloned meat. About 30% agreed that meat from cloned animals was safe to eat, whereas about 29% believed the meat to be unsafe; 41% neither agreed nor disagreed that meat from cloned animals was safe to eat. Despite potential concerns about the safety of meat from cloned animals, people expressed confidence in the safety of meat and milk typically bought in the grocery store. About 64% of the public believed that, in general, the meat and milk they buy from the grocery stores is safe to eat. Only 10% disagreed with this statement. Although people expressed confidence in the safety of meat and milk (see Table 4), somewhat paradoxically, they expressed little trust or confidence in the federal government to regulate food safety or cloned meat/milk (see Table 5). For example, almost 40% of the public did not believe the government was doing everything it could to ensure the safety of food products (only 30% thought they were doing all they could). Only 20% believed that animal cloning is carefully regulated by the U.S. government. Further, only 24% of the public trust the government to properly regulate the use of animal cloning. Expressed levels of trust in information about cloning were also relatively low. In order of decreasing trustworthiness, 32% trust information about cloning from University scientists and researchers, 29.3% trust information about cloning from the USDA, 28.8% trust information from the FDA, and only 26.1% of people trust information from the EPA. These results suggest that the trust the public has in the safety of the general food supply is apparently not a result of confidence in the government regulating food safety. One interesting question is whether responses to the agree/ disagree statements are correlated with one another. For instance are people that believe the government is doing what it can to ensure the safety of food products the same people that believe meat from cloned animals is as safe to eat? Simple bi-variate correlations between people s agree/disagree responses to the Likert scale questions can be used to answer this question. Table 6 reports these correlations. Results reveal high correlations, in the range of 0.5 and higher, between (i) trust in information about cloning from the USDA, (ii) the belief that the government is doing all it can to ensure the safety of food products, (iii) perceptions about the safety of cloned meat, and (iv) willingness to eat cloned meat. People who have more trust in the information from the USDA and believe the government is doing what it can to ensure the safety of food are also the same people who are more convinced of the safety of meat from cloned animals and are more willing to eat cloned meat/milk. Consumers that are more willing to eat meat from cloned animals are less likely to agree that animal cloning is unacceptable. Another interesting result shown in Table 6 is that the belief that cloned meat is already sold in grocery stores products is positively correlated with people s willingness to eat cloned meat. This potentially points to a type of endowment effect where people are supportive of what they perceive to be the status quo: if people believe cloned meat is already being sold, they are more willing to eat: if people believe cloned meat is not being sold, they are less willing. Table 3 Willingness-to-eat cloned meat and milk. a Statement Mean Likert score b Percent Percent neither agree Percent disagree c nor disagree d agree e I am willing to eat meat from cloned animals 2.72 (1.28) f 43.2% 26.0% 30.8% The average American is willing to eat meat from cloned animals 2.76 (0.98) 35.1% 44.2% 20.7% I am willing to eat meat from the offspring of cloned animals 2.72 (1.29) 43.0% 26.1% 30.9% I am willing to consume milk products from cloned animals 2.70 (1.29) 44.4% 24.8% 30.8% I am willing to consume milk products from the offspring of cloned animals 2.73 (1.29) 43.0% 25.7% 31.3% If I learned that the meat products I regularly purchase came from cloned 2.78 (1.29) 41.4% 25.7% 32.9% animals, I would continue to buy the meat products as usual If I learned that the milk products I regularly purchase came from cloned animals, I would continue to buy the milk products as usual 2.78 (1.31) 42.1% 24.6% 33.3% a No differences were found between when the respondents received an information statement about cloning therefore data was pooled across the treatments. b Mean response to question, To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements? Response categories were: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree. c Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 1 = strongly disagree or 2 = somewhat disagree. d Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 3 = neither agree nor disagree. e Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 4 = somewhat agree or 5 = strongly agree. f Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations.

6 488 K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) Table 4 Beliefs about safety and acceptability of cloned meat and milk. a Statement Mean Likert score b Percent Percent neither agree Percent disagree c nor disagree d agree e Some of the meat currently sold in grocery stores is from 2.79 (0.88) f 27.4% 57.5% 15.1% cloned animals or their offspring Animal cloning is unacceptable 3.03 (1.26) 34.4% 33.7% 31.9% Animal cloning will result in beneficial outcomes to me 2.71 (1.09) 35.8% 43.6% 20.6% The meat from cloned animals is safe to eat 2.94 (1.12) 29.2% 41.2% 29.6% In general, the meat and milk I buy from grocery stores is safe to eat 3.68 (0.92) 10.3% 26.1% 63.6% a No differences were found between when the respondents received an information statement about cloning therefore data was pooled across the treatments. b Mean response to question, To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements? Response categories were: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree. c Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 1 = strongly disagree or 2 = somewhat disagree. d Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 3 = neither agree nor disagree. e Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 4 = somewhat agree or 5 = strongly agree. f Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations. Another interesting question is whether there are differences in the types of people based on their responses to the animal cloning statements. Bellows, Alcaraz, and Hallman (2010) showed consumers valued food attributes differently. To determine the relationship between socio-economic factors and attitudes toward cloning, several ordered probit models were estimated (see Table 7). The dependent variables are responses to the agree/disagree Likert-scale questions. Given that the responses to these questions fall on a 5-point scale, the ordered probit model is the appropriate specification as it treats the dependent variable as ordinal rather than cardinal. Table 6 revealed high correlations between these response statements and these correlations were ignored and we treated each model as independent. These estimates are unbiased, but perhaps not as efficiently estimated as they would have been in a systems regression. However due to the discrete choices, a seemingly unrelated regression model is more complex to estimate. The reported parameter estimates correspond to the marginal effects on the underlying latent (unobserved) variable, which is the propensity to agree with each statement. Table 7 reports the results of the ordered probit regressions. Results reveal that providing respondents with a week to digest information on animal cloning had no effect on responses to the agree/disagree Likert scale questions. Females are more likely to agree that animal cloning is unacceptable than males. Likewise, males are more likely to be willing to eat meat from cloned animals and are more likely to believe that cloned meat is safe to eat than females. Results also indicate that people with only a high school diploma were more likely to believe cloning was unsafe and believe that cloning is unacceptable than people with a bachelor s degree or higher. Thus, education appears to have some relationship to the acceptability of cloning. Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, whether people lived in a household with Internet access was strongly associated with most of the dependent variables shown in Table 7. People in households without Internet access are more likely to believe that animal cloning is unacceptable than households with Internet access. Similarly, people in households with Internet access are more likely to believe meat from cloned animals is safe to eat, are more willing to eat cloned meat, and express greater trust in information from the USDA than non-internet households. This finding may be due to the fact that households with Internet access have received more information about cloning. An alternative explanation is that people with Internet in the household may be more accepting of technology in general than non-internet households, and this general acceptance of technology may spill over into acceptance of cloning technology. The last few rows in Table 7 indicate that people who are the primary shoppers of food in their household are more likely to disagree with the statement that animal cloning is unacceptable. Further, people that had children under the age of 12 in their household are less likely to believe that meat from cloned animals is safe to eat. Relative importance of competing objections to animal cloning Table 8 reports the model estimates for the logit and RPL models and the calculated importance scores for each statement or issue. Likelihood ratio tests indicate that the logit model can be rejected Table 5 Perceptions about the federal government and cloned meat and milk. a Statement Mean Likert score b Percent Percent neither agree Percent disagree c nor disagree d agree e The U.S. government is doing everything it can to ensure the safety of food products 2.80 (1.12) f 40.7% 29.7% 29.6% The U.S. government can trace the meat from cloned animals back to 2.98 (1.05) 27.6% 42.8% 29.6% the farm on which the animal lived Animal cloning is carefully regulated by the U.S. government 2.71 (1.01) 37.3% 42.7% 20.0% I trust the U.S. government to properly regulate the use of animal cloning 2.60 (1.15) 47.1% 29.0% 24.0% I trust information about cloning from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2.76 (1.16) 40.0% 30.7% 29.3% I trust information about cloning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 2.74 (1.15) 41.3% 29.8% 28.8% I trust information about cloning from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2.70 (1.14) 41.7% 32.2% 26.1% I trust information about cloning from University scientists and researchers 2.89 (1.12) 34.5% 33.5% 32.0% a No differences were found between when the respondents received an information statement about cloning therefore data was pooled across the treatments. b Mean response to question, To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements? Response categories were: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree. c Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 1 = strongly disagree or 2 = somewhat disagree. d Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 3 = neither agree nor disagree. e Percentage of respondents in the pooled sample indicating 4 = somewhat agree or 5 = strongly agree. f Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations.

7 K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) Table 6 Bivariate correlations between responses to statements related to the acceptability of cloning. Some of the meat currently sold in grocery stores is from cloned animals or their offspring The U.S. government is doing everything it can to ensure the safety of food products I trust information about cloning from the (USDA) I am willing to eat meat from cloned animals The meat from cloned animals is safe to eat Some of the meat currently sold in grocery stores 1.00* a is from cloned animals or their offspring The U.S. government is doing everything it can to 0.16* 1.00* ensure the safety of food products I trust information about cloning from 0.23* 0.66* 1.00* the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) I am willing to eat meat from cloned animals 0.29* 0.45* 0.62* 1.00* The meat from cloned animals is safe to eat 0.29* 0.51* 0.65* 0.79* 1.00* Animal cloning is unacceptable 0.07* 0.22* 0.35* 0.55* 0.48* Note: statistics are correlations between responses to questions, To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements? Response categories were: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree. a One asterisk implies that the parameter is statistically different than zero at the 0.05 level or lower. in favor of the RPL model, and as such, we focus on the results from the RPL specification. These importance scores are shown in Fig. 1. The most popular rejection to animal cloning was the statement cloning is unnatural because it is not a process that occurs in nature with the statement animal cloning will lead to human cloning the second most popular rejection. These statements match consumers views toward animal cloning about four to five times better than the statements that cloning will result in unhealthy farm animals and that meat and milk from clones and their offspring is unsafe to eat. One interesting note is that the FDA s report was in regards to the safety of meat and milk products from cloned animals. However, this was one of consumer s least concerns with unnaturalness and it leading to human cloning as more important. Table 7 Relationship between socio-economic characteristics and cloning concerns: ordered probit estimates. Variable Dependent variable a I am willing to eat meat from cloned animals Some of the meat currently sold in the grocery stores is from cloned animals or their offspring The U.S. government is doing everything it can to ensure the safety of food products The meat from cloned animals is safe to eat Animal cloning is unacceptable I trust information about cloning from the (USDA) Threshold Parameter * b (0.273) c 1.049* (0.281) (0.269) 0.800* (0.272) 1.201* (0.271) (0.270) Threshold Parameter * (0.024) 0.559* (0.029) 0.790* (0.03) 0.499* (0.026) 0.662* (0.029) 0.632* (0.027) Threshold Parameter3 1.23* (0.033) 2.237* (0.044) 1.581* (0.037) 1.653* (0.039) 1.578* (0.038) 1.462* (0.036) Threshold Parameter * (0.047) 3.340* (0.073) 2.713* (0.054) 2.611* (0.051) 2.076* (0.043) 2.629* (0.054) Age 0.004* (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) 0.006* (0.002) 0.003* (0.002) (0.002) Treatment (0.045) (0.047) (0.045) (0.045) (0.045) (0.045) Gender 0.454* (0.049) 0.157* (0.05) 0.232* (0.048) 0.363* (0.049) 0.336* (0.049) 0.276* (0.048) Income 0.002* (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) 0.001* (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) Internet 0.240* (0.055) 0.187* (0.057) 0.200* (0.054) 0.250* (0.055) 0.185* (0.055) 0.252* (0.054) NoHS d (0.087) (0.09) 0.199* (0.086) (0.087) (0.087) (0.086) HS d (0.067) (0.069) (0.066) 0.214* (0.066) 0.184* (0.067) (0.066) Some college d (0.064) (0.066) (0.063) (0.064) (0.064) (0.064) White e (0.218) (0.223) (0.214) (0.216) (0.213) (0.214) Black e (0.228) (0.232) (0.223) 0.442* (0.225) (0.223) (0.224) Other e (0.237) (0.243) (0.233) (0.235) 0.01 (0.233) (0.234) Hispanic e 0.15 (0.227) (0.232) (0.222) (0.224) (0.222) (0.223) Northeast f (0.072) 0.235* (0.075) 0.03 (0.072) (0.072) (0.072) (0.072) Midwest f (0.07) (0.072) (0.069) (0.070) (0.070) (0.070) South f 0.143* (0.063) 0.136* (0.065) (0.062) 0.123* (0.063) 0.230* (0.063) (0.062) Meat: never g (0.164) (0.169) (0.163) (0.163) (0.165) (0.163) Meat: yearly g (0.138) (0.144) (0.137) (0.138) (0.14) (0.138) Meat: monthly g (0.124) (0.130) (0.124) (0.124) (0.126) (0.124) Meat: weekly g (0.121) (0.127) (0.120) (0.121) (0.123) (0.121) Farm (0.063) (0.065) (0.062) (0.063) (0.063) (0.062) Pshopper (0.054) (0.056) (0.054) (0.054) 0.132* (0.055) (0.054) Child (0.055) (0.057) (0.055) 0.108* (0.055) (0.055) (0.055) Log-likelihood 3, , , , , ,259.7 Number of observations 2,216 2,214 2,219 2,217 2,200 2,218 a Dependent variable is response to question, To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements? Response categories were: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, and 5 = strongly agree. b One asterisk indicates that the parameter is statistically different than zero at the 0.05 level or lower. c Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. d Parameter estimate compared to education of Bachelor s degree or higher. e Parameter estimate compared to ethnicity of 2+races, non-hispanic. f Parameter estimate compared to residents in West U.S Census Region. g Parameter estimate compared to purchasing meat every day.

8 490 K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) Table 8 Relative importance of competing objections to cloning: logit and random parameter logit estimates fit to paired comparison choices. Variable Econometric estimates Importance scores Logit RPL mean a RPL St. Dev. b Logit RPL Intercept (order effect) (0.032) c 0.103* (0.034) 1.265* (0.072) Cloning is unnatural because it is not a process that occurs in nature 0.543* d (0.050) 0.688* (0.049) 1.759* (0.049) 24.5% 23.9% Animal cloning will lead to human cloning (0.059) (0.060) 2.630* (0.047) 13.2% 20.6% Cloning results in animals being viewed as objects to be produced (0.042) 0.160* (0.039) 1.966* (0.001) 13.4% 14.9% as opposed to being valuable in and of themselves Animal cloning is morally wrong 0.476* (0.071) 0.929* (0.074) 2.632* (0.062) 8.8% 13.1% Cloning will reduce genetic diversity to an unacceptable level (0.045) 0.142* (0.042) 1.269* (0.057) 13.1% 10.5% The scientists and biotechnology companies who developed cloning % 7.7% technology cannot be trusted to look out for my best interest Cloning will result in unhealthy farm animals 0.525* (0.053) 0.747* (0.051) 0.916* (0.058) 8.4% 5.1% Meat and milk from clones and their offspring is unsafe to eat 1.208* (0.066) 1.844* (0.072) 1.845* (0.069) 4.3% 4.2% Notes: Results based on 17,434 choices made by 2231 individuals; log-likelihood function value for logit was and for random parameter logit was ; a likelihood ratio test could not reject the hypothesis that the parameters were the same across the two information treatments. a The estimates refer to the estimated mean in the population from the random parameter logit model. b The estimates refers to the estimated standard deviation in the population from the random parameter logit model. c Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. d One asterisk represents parameter is statistically different than zero at the 0.05 level or lower. Although the results presented in Table 8 provided a picture of the relative level of concern for several issues related to animal cloning, it is of interest to ask whether people who express a higher overall level of concern about animal cloning find certain issues to be more or less problematic than people who express a lower overall level of concern. Table 9 provides some insight into this issue by reporting bivariate correlations between agree/disagree responses to selected Likert scale questions and the individual-specific importance scores for competing cloning concerns derived from the random parameter logit. Results shown in Table 9 indicate that people who are relatively more concerned about the morality of animal cloning Cloning will result in unhealthy farm animals, 5.1% The scien sts and biotechnology companies who developed cloning technology cannot be trusted to look out for my best interest, 7.7% Meat and milk from clones and their offspring is unsafe to eat, 4.2% Cloning is unnatural because it is not a process that occurs in nature, 23.9% Cloning will reduce gene c diversity to an unacceptable level, 10.5% Animal cloning is morally wrong, 13.1% Animal cloning will lead to human cloning, 20.6% Cloning results in animals being viewed as objects to be produced as opposed to being valuable in and of themselves, 14.9% Fig. 1. Relative importance of competing objections to cloning (the percentage of respondents indicating the statement best reflects their views on animal cloning).

9 K.R. Brooks, J.L. Lusk / Appetite 57 (2011) Table 9 Bivariate correlations between responses to statements related to the acceptability of cloning. Relative importance of objection to cloning b Responses to agree/disagree statements a Some of the meat currently sold in grocery stores is from cloned animals or their offspring The U.S. government is doing everything it can to ensure the safety of food products I trust information about cloning from the USDA I am willing to eat meat from cloned animals The meat from cloned animals is safe to eat Animal cloning is unacceptable Animal cloning is morally wrong 0.07* c 0.07* 0.13* 0.24* 0.21* 0.21* Meat and milk from clones and their offspring 0.11* 0.12* 0.12* 0.16* 0.16* 0.10* is unsafe to eat Animal cloning will lead to human cloning * 0.09* 0.08* 0.04 Cloning will result in unhealthy farm animals 0.05* 0.13* 0.13* 0.13* 0.13* 0.03 Cloning is unnatural because it is not a process 0.06* that occurs in nature Cloning will reduce genetic diversity to an * unacceptable level Cloning results in animals being viewed as 0.12* 0.12* 0.16* 0.20* 0.18* 0.14* objects to be produced as opposed to being valuable in and of themselves The scientists and biotechnology companies who developed cloning technology cannot be trusted to look out for my best interest * 0.13* 0.10* 0.11* 0.05* a Responses to questions, To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?. b Relative importance of competing objections to cloning determined by calculating posterior probabilities from the random parameter logit model fit to paired comparison choice data. c One asterisk implies the parameter is statistically different than zero at the 0.05 level or lower. are the same people who are less willing to eat meat from cloned animals. Thus, although the morality of animal cloning only ranked fourth on the list of competing concerns, it is an issue highly related to willingness to eat cloned meat. Interestingly, the issue of most concern to people that cloning is unnatural because it is not a process that occurs in nature is virtually unrelated to people s willingness to eat cloned meat. That is, people for whom unnaturalness is a relatively big concern are just as likely to express willingness to eat cloned meat as are people for whom unnaturalness is not as big a concern. Conclusions The results of this study reveal that consumers have a higher level of awareness of animal cloning as compared to other assisted reproductive technologies, such as artificial insemination and biotechnology. Attitudes toward cloning are neither overwhelmingly positive nor negative. Approximately 31% of consumers are willing to consume meat and milk products from cloned animals, while 43% are unwilling, and 26% are neither willing nor unwilling. Consumers do not differentiate much between products from cloned animals and the offspring of cloned animals. Although 64% believe that the meat and milk they buy is safe to eat, only 30% think the U.S. government is doing everything it can to ensure the safety of food. Less than 30% of respondents expressed trust in information about cloning from U.S. federal agencies. People were relatively more trusting of information from University scientists than the USDA, the FDA, and the EPA. Furthermore, females and those with only a high school education are less supportive of consuming meat/milk from cloned animals than are males and those with a bachelor s degree or higher level of education. Overall the main concerns for animal cloning is that it is an unnatural process and that it may lead to human cloning. Consumer s preferences for animal cloning will play a large part in the future of its use in the agriculture industry. Animal cloning could potentially allow farmers to increase quality of meat and milk products while maintaining or potentially decreasing prices. The current study analyzed opinion polls which is a part of the public opinion process but are a snap shot in time (Bauer, 2002). Further research should be conducted to determine how consumers will react if and when products from cloned animals enter the food supply to continue gaining knowledge of consumers opinions. If animal cloning is not allowed, future technology could be reduced and research should be conducted on the effects of these types of policies. Both policy makers and private sector marketers need to be aware of consumers preferences for cloned animals as we continue forward. 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