Public views on selecting cattle

The EC BovReg project on the functional genomics of cattle breeding, used a specially created Democs card game for public engagement to explain cattle breeding and genomics, and to explore ethical questions about breeding priorities and practices, with small groups of publics. Democs is an established public engagement tool to enable groups to explore technical issues through the medium of cards. During the project, a total of 20 Democs games were played by 118 people, primarily across the UK, Finland and the Netherlands (8th July 2021 - 31 August 2023). The main aim of the games was to engage publics with developments in cattle breeding and the factors and ethical issues which bear upon these. The outputs from the game also give some quantitative and qualitative data, helping us to understand how players expressed their views. Individual responses were invited from players on how important they considered five breeding goals (voting sheet A), questions about ethical limits to selection, on genome editing and on breeding for resilience (voting sheet B) , and how much extra they might be willing to pay for dairy or beef products produced from cattle bred for particular goals (disease resistance, reduced methane, animal health and resilience) (voting sheet C). The relatively small number of players and the self-selecting nature of the groups mean that these data reflect the sample of the people playing the game and cannot simply be extrapolated to wider publics. The willingness to pay extra is unlikely to represent actual values people are willing to pay, rather the question was used as a way of measuring strength of opinion on various applications of cattle breeding. Games with prefix J, T and JV were played in Finland Games with prefix U were played in the Netherlands Games with prefix D and BVGA1 were played by groups in international livestock meetings Games with prefix S, R, E and H were played in the UK欧盟委员会（EC）BovReg项目聚焦肉牛育种功能基因组学研究，开发了专属的Democs卡牌游戏以开展公众参与活动，旨在向公众科普肉牛育种与基因组学知识，并通过小型公众小组探讨育种优先级与实践相关的伦理议题。Democs是一套成熟的公众参与工具，可通过卡牌载体帮助小组探讨技术议题。本项目周期为2021年7月8日至2023年8月31日，期间共计开展20场Democs游戏活动，共有118名参与者，活动主要覆盖英国、芬兰与荷兰三国。该游戏活动的核心目标是让公众了解肉牛育种的发展现状，以及与之相关的各类影响因素与伦理议题。活动产出的数据同时包含定量与定性两类信息，有助于解析参与者的观点表达模式。参与者需提交个人反馈，内容涵盖：1. 五项育种目标的重要性评分（投票表A）；2. 关于育种选择伦理边界、基因组编辑（genome editing）以及抗逆性育种相关的问题（投票表B）；3. 针对特定育种目标（抗病性、甲烷减排、动物健康与抗逆性）培育的肉牛所产出的乳制品与牛肉产品，参与者愿意额外支付的金额（投票表C）。由于参与者规模较小，且参与小组为自愿报名的样本，因此本数据集仅反映参与活动的人群特征，不可直接外推至更广泛的公众群体。本次调查中的意愿支付金额仅用于衡量参与者对各类肉牛育种应用的观点强度，并不等同于其实际愿意支付的金额。活动分组说明如下：以J、T和JV为前缀的活动在芬兰举办；以U为前缀的活动在荷兰举办；以D与BVGA1为前缀的活动在国际畜牧会议中由参会小组开展；以S、R、E与H为前缀的活动在英国举办。