6 - Validation and Application of a Survey of On-farm Worker Attitudes Towards Euthanasia

Abstract: On-farm euthanasia of pigs considers aspects of welfare and economics, but few comprehensive guidelines are available for swine producers and further, do not consider cultural barriers. The Hispanic workforce largely represents the bulk of agricultural workers. Euthanasia requires the ability to identify compromised pigs, technical skills, and willingness to euthanize pigs. In addition, timely euthanasia is part of the Common Swine Industry Audit (CSIA) and thus, can lead to failed audits. The U.S. swine industry employs a large percentage of Latin American workers through NAFTA visas. These workers vary in their degree of education and pig experience. Proper training of this workforce and identification of the barriers to performing timely euthanasia is critical. The objectives of this study were to: 1) develop and validate surveys (including demographic information, swine management, moral injury events scale, impact of event scale and the professional quality of life scale) in Spanish to determine Hispanic caretaker attitudes towards timely euthanasia and 2) to assess Hispanic caretakers using the validated surveys to determine the barriers associated to timely euthanasia. A total of 163 workers were surveyed and data were analyzed using Chi-Square. The results indicated that employees with less time working in the company presented less CSIA knowledge and a reduced capacity to identify pigs that needed to be euthanizing (P< 0.001). Spearman's rank-order correlations indicated that stress was the most frequently correlated scale, related with burnout, transgressions, betrayals, and worker satisfaction (P=0.022). A Mann-Whitney U test determined that there was a gender difference, presenting a high level of stress and a low level of satisfaction in females and the opposite results in males (P=0.026). It is important to identify the factors that decrease or negatively affect the ability of employees to perform euthanasia in order to provide efficient training that improves good practices in the swine industry.