Responsible antibiotic use labelling and consumers’ willingness to buy and pay for fluid milk.

The emergence of antibiotic resistant infections due to antibiotic overuse, including in animal agriculture, poses a looming threat to human, animal, and environmental health. Consequently, antibiotic use in all areas of animal agriculture, dairy farming included, has come under scrutiny. In the US, concerns about antibiotic resistant infections have called for a reduction of antibiotic use in livestock, including dairy cattle. Although organic dairy farming may be effective in curbing antibiotic use, the universal use thereof is unlikely as it is impractical and unattainable due to high land and product premium demands. In addition, the USDA’s organic certification, the directive of which indicates zero antibiotic use in milk production, raises animal welfare concerns, as it could discourage the use of antibiotics even to treat indicated diseases. Therefore, a proposed alternative for US consumers is a label which indicates to them responsible antibiotic use (RAU), rather than complete elimination. This presumably would minimize antibiotic use more than conventional (unlabeled) milk and at the same time improve animal welfare more than organic milk. The goal of the study cited below was to determine consumers’ (1) self-reported preference and (2) willingness to pay for this hypothetical RAU label of milk relative to existing substitutes in organic and unlabeled fluid milk.

The experiment was conducted in two ways: (1) by means of a nationally representative survey of US adults, and (2) by means of a randomized experimental auction with real money and real milk.

The results showed that almost half (48.5%) of the survey participants responded that they would buy a RAU-labelled milk. However, consumers in the experimental auction refused to pay a significant premium for the milk compared with unlabeled milk. The mean willingness to pay (and 95% confidence interval) per half-gallon was $1.92 ($1.65–$2.19) for RAU-labelled milk versus $1.86 ($1.58–$2.13) for unlabeled milk.

These results suggest that consumers’ survey-identified preferences for RAU-labelled milk could reflect either social desirability bias or a genuine preference for which, however, they simply will not pay a significant premium.