Animal Welfare

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Animal Welfare

• Are animals AWARE?
• Do they KNOW they are suffering?
• Do they UNDERSTAND another animals suffering?
• Do they REMEMBER?
• Does the future MEAN anything to them?
• Can they PLAN future events?
• Do they MODIFY their behaviour according to
  another's behaviour?

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What is animal welfare?
The welfare of an individual is its state in
regard to its attempts to cope with its
environment. This state includes how much it is
having to do to cope, the extent to which it is
succeeding or failing to cope, and its associated
feelings. Donald Broom
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Mind, body nature
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Animal Welfare

• Affective states Pain due to dehorning and
  tail-docking
• Natural behavior Rearing systems for calves
• Health Injuries associated with housing systems

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FIVE freedoms

• Freedom from
• Thirst, hunger, malnutrition
• by ready access to fresh water and a diet to
  maintain full health and vigour
• 2) Discomfort
• - by providing an appropriate environment
• including shelter and a comfortable resting
• area
• 3) Pain, injury and disease
• - by prevention or rapid diagnosis and
• treatment
• 4) Express natural behaviours
• - by providing sufficient space, proper
  facilities
• and company of the animals own kind
• 5) Fear distress
• - by ensuring conditions and treatment to
• avoid mental suffering.

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How animal welfare problems have risen

• Greater efficiency in terms of capital invested
• Feed Conversion Efficiency
• Stocking density
• Growth Rate through genetic selection
• Reproductive performance

• Increased public outcry
• Recurrence of diseases outbreak
• Bad Publicity Harm, Slaughter, Confinement of
  Animals
• Absence of Knowledge about modern animal
  production practices

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Consequences

• Expansion in farm size
• Overstocking in livestock buildings
• Respiratory Disease
• Excessive Dust
• High Level of Ammonia
• Genetic Selection for growth rate
• Confined Systems
• Inappropriate use of bulls from breeds of large
  mature size

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Environmental Effects

• Lack of Control Absence of Specific Input.
• Certain stimuli are of great importance to the
• survival of animals, so they may be sought
• very actively and their absence may result in
• poor welfare, as evidenced by various abnor-
• malities of physiology and behavior.
• EXAMPLE
• The set of stimuli associated with the mothers
  teats in young mammals. Early weaning of calves
  and pigs results in vigorous teat-seeking
  behavior and in problems, both for the teat
  seeker and for other individuals whose navel,
  penis, scrotum, ears, and so on, are sucked

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Behavioural Effects

• Frustration.
• When animals know how to control their
  interactions with their environment but are
  prevented from carrying out the action, the
  resulting frustration causes various
  abnormalities of physiology and behavior that
  are indicators of poor welfare.
• About 24hours before farrowing, a sow in a
  natural environment will seek out a suitable nest
  site, excavate a nesting hollow, collect nesting
  materials from the surrounding environment, carry
  them to a chosen nest site, deposit them, and
  build a nest
• Some frustration occurs in many group feeding
  situations in which access is available to some
  of the individuals but more timid subordinates
  would like to feed but cannot.
• There is also an element of frustration in many
  farm housing situations where space

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Behavioural Effects

• Pain
• injury due to badly designed housing
• and equipment
• surgical interventions
• such as castration and tail-docking
• metabolic pathologies which are often associated
  with fast growth.
• Fear
• Fear responses are either a preparation for
  danger or are a response to detectable danger.
• Fear during handling, transport, preslaughter
  procedures, or operations on farms or in
  laboratories may be associated with freezing
  behavior, tonic immobility, escape attempts,
  aggression, adrenal cortex activity, heart-rate
  elevation, and effects on meat quality

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Key Animal Welfare Problems in Farm Animals

• Insufficient space
• Barren environments/boredom
• Lack of social contact/play/exercise
• Frustration of key behaviours
• Dust bathing, nest building, hewing, rooting
• Overstimulation
• mixing unfamilair animals, noise
• Inhumane methods
• e.g., force feeding, plucking live ducks
• Transport
• Stress, injury
• Handling
• Brutal rough
• Slaughter
• Shackling, Holding

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Key Animal Welfare Problems in Farm
AnimalsGenetic Antagonisms

• Leg Disorders, lameness and conformation and
  growth rate in poultry
• Stress induced deaths and muscularity in
  particular breeds of pig
• Dystocia, conformation and body size in
  particular cattle breeds

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Close confined systems

• Farrowing crates
• Gestating Stalls
• Dry sow stalls
• Battery Hen cages
• Veal calf crates
• Rabbit Cages

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Husbandry Practices

• Tail docking
• Castration
• Ear Notching
• Beak trimming
• Dehorning
• Teeth Clipping
• Disbudding

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Concern for Animal Welfare

• Respect for animals and and sense of fair play
• Poor Welfare can lead to poor product quality
• Risk of loss of market shares for products which
  acquire a poor welfare image

• Animals economic value and its welfare

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MEASURES OF WElFARE

• Biological Fitness
• Measures of Body Damage
• Disease Level
• Behavioural Changes
• Reduced life expectancy
• Responsiveness
• Stereotypies
• Preference Tests

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Various indicators are used to assess
animalwelfare.

• Physical health (mortality, morbidity, injuries)
  is a prerequisite.
• Production traits can be used as indicators of
  welfare, but they are generally not very
  sensitive.
• Physiological indicators are derived from stress
  physiology and their use is, up to now, mostly
  restricted for assessing acute stress.
• Behavioural indicators of welfare are often very
  pertinent criteria.

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Welfare issues Dairy cows

• Removal of calf at early age
• Distress - cant perform maternal behaviour
• Better to separate quickly rather than gt24hrs
• Research suggests less abnormal behaviour if
  separate at 24hrs cf. 96 hrs
• Rearing calves
• Veal crates banned in several countries

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Welfare issues Dairy cows

• Selected for high milk yield (gt10x natural)
• Large udder - lameness mastitis
• Disease, discomfort, pain, injury
• Metabolic disorders
• Run a marathon a day
• Life expectancy ¼ of natural lifespan

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Welfare issues Dairy cows

• Twice-daily contact with herdsman
• Research into human/cow interactions
• Use Y maze to test preferences
• Prefer calm/no voice to shouting
• Can discriminate between people, using multiple
  cues (height, face)
• Can associate people/places with aversive events
  better to do these away from the home stall

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Welfare issues Dairy cows

• Removal of calf at early age
• Distress - cant perform maternal behaviour
• Better to separate quickly rather than gt24hrs
• Research suggests less abnormal behaviour if
  separate at 24hrs cf. 96 hrs
• Rearing calves
• Veal crates banned in several countries

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Welfare issues Dairy cows

• Selected for high milk yield (gt10x natural)
• Large udder - lameness mastitis
• Disease, discomfort, pain, injury
• Metabolic disorders
• Run a marathon a day
• Life expectancy ¼ of natural lifespan

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Welfare issues Dairy cows

• Twice-daily contact with herdsman
• Research into human/cow interactions
• Use Y maze to test preferences
• Prefer calm/no voice to shouting
• Can discriminate between people, using multiple
  cues (height, face)
• Can associate people/places with aversive events
  better to do these away from the home stall

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Welfare issues Dairy cows

• Zero-grazing, silage, concentrate feeds
• No hunger, but adequate nutrition?
• Spend less time foraging indoors
• Research suggests that spend rest of time
  idling/lying down
• i.e. less of a problem cf. pigs

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Conflicts and choices between animal welfare and
productivity

• Natural welfare (point A)
• Animal-centred.
• Presumably what the animal itself would choose.
• Animal free to act as its natural instincts
  dictate feeding
• pattern, social grouping, mating behaviour,
  rearing
• young, establishing and maintaining territory,
  aggression
• and imposing social dominance, and the like.
• Clearly inconsistent with domestication and
  commercial
• production.

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Conflicts and choices between animal welfare and
productivity

• Maximal welfare (point B)
• Animal-centred.
• The best conditions attainable are offered within
  the (unnatural) environment of domestication.
• Apart from some restrictions on natural
  behaviour, the best possible food, shelter,
  space, physical comfort,
• health, safety, social interaction, etc. are
  provided.
• Farm animals are treated as well as we would
  treat our children.
• Not a realistic benchmark for economic livestock
  production.

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Conflicts and choices between animal welfare and
productivity

• Welfare breakdown (point C)
• The animals production is extended to the
  extreme of its biological capability.
• Pushing the animals beyond this point would cause
  catastrophic breakdowns in health and
  productivity.
• This leads ultimately to collapse of the
  livestock production system.

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Conflicts and choices between animal welfare and
productivity
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Conflicts and choices between animal welfare and
productivity
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Conflicts and choices between animal welfare and
productivity
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Conflicts and choices between animal welfare and
productivity
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Example

• Reducing pain from dehorning

distress due to restraint sedative (e.g.
xylazine) immediate pain nerve block (e.g.
lidocaine) longer term pain NSAID (e.g.
ketoprofen) other techniques? e.g. caustic
paste
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Minimising Pain

• Done by the best method
• Correct equipment is used
• Done at the right time
• Done to the right class of animal
• Correct follow up
• Properly trained personnel

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Alleviation of Fear

• increased positive contact with humans,
  particularly when the animals are young and most
  sensitive to handling effects
• knowledge of the human behaviours or postures
  that can frighten or startle animals
• improved facilities designed to reduce the amount
  of rough handling
• avoidance of aversive handling techniques,like
  using electric prods
• Improving the design of handling facilties

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Animal Welfare

• Concerns about animal welfare include health,
  natural living and affective states like pain
• Housing and rearing practices for dairy cattle
  need to reflect these concerns
• The most workable options will improve
  conditions for the animals and the producer --
• good science will help provide these win-win
  options

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Benefits of Animal Welfare Standards

• Better health, survival and productivity when
  animals are given adequate space, shelter, and
  access to food and water,
• Better Product quality
• Reduced stress if animals are handled in a way
  that avoids causing fear, with positive effects
  on growth and ease of handling, and
• Less harmful behaviour such as aggression when
  the environment and diet meet the animalsneeds.

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Good vs Bad Welfare

• Good Welfare
• Variety of normal behaviours shown
• Strongly preferred behaviours expressed
• Physiological/behavioural indicators of pleasure

• Poor Welfare
• Life expectancy, ability to grow ?
• Body damage
• Disease
• Immunosuppression
• Physiological/ Behavioural attempts to cope
• Behaviour pathology
• Self narcotization
• Behavioural aversion, suppression of normal
  behaviour
• Prevention of normal physiological processes,
  anatomical and/or cognitive development