ZO3309 Animal Management & Welfare

Animal welfare: science and

practice
Cath Dennis
 Welfare
• Physical and mental health and
happiness, especially of a person
(Cambridge Dictionary)

• The capacity to maintain health and avoid

suffering
 Animal welfare
• ‘the state of an animal in relation to its
environment’ (Donald Broom)

• ‘includes its physical and mental state, and

we consider that good animal welfare
implies both fitness and a sense of
wellbeing’ (FAWC)
 History of animal welfare
• Husbandry agriculture
• Industrial agriculture
• Ethology & behaviourism

• ‘the emergence of modern animal welfare

science was delayed through the first 70 years
of the 20th century by Behaviorism, which
eschewed any consideration of subjective
experiences’
1964
 Brambell Report (1965)
• Investigation into the welfare of intensively
farmed animals
• Animals should have the freedom to
"stand up, lie down, turn around, groom
themselves and stretch their limbs“
• ‘Brambell's Five Freedoms’
• 1979 Farm Animal Welfare Council - five
freedoms codified into the recognisable list
format
 The Five Freedoms (FAWC 1979)
• Freedom from hunger and thirst…. by ready
access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour.

• Freedom from discomfort….. by providing an

appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.

• Freedom from pain, injury or disease…. by

prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.

• Freedom to express natural behaviour…. by

providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animals own
kind.

• Freedom from fear and distress….. by ensuring

conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.
Updating 5F: 5 Domains
Updating 5F: 5 Domains
Updating 5F: 5 Domains
 Exercise
• In the 2020 5D model summary poster:
• What is listed in the pale yellow boxes?
• What is listed in the green boxes?
• What do you understand by the term ‘affect’?
• Can you divide ‘affects’ into ‘avoidance only’
and ‘potentially positive’?
• Is one of the four/five domains shown in the
poster more important than the others?
 Can we measure welfare?
• Improvements in animal welfare can be based on
the answers to two questions:
Q1: Will it improve animal health?
Q2: Will it give the animals something they want?
– ‘health’ and ‘what animals want’ are thus not just two of
many measures of welfare. They provide the definition
of welfare against which others can be validated. They
also tell us what research we have to do and how we
can judge whether welfare of animals has been
genuinely improved.
Stamp Dawkins
Consumer demand testing
Cognitive bias
 Precision livestock farming
‘Management of livestock farming by continuous automated
real-time monitoring of the health and welfare of livestock
and the associated impact on the environment.’
World Organisation for Animal Health
(WOAH/OIE)
 Legislation

The trial of Bill Burns, the world's first known conviction for animal cruelty
under the 1822 Martin's Act, after Burns was found beating his donkey.
Legislation
Animal Protection Index
Assurance
EU Welfare Quality Project
AssureWel
 Precision livestock farming

Despite of what can be considered as a good caring

relationship between farmers and animals that is mediated
by PLF, people involved in conventional industrial farming
still seem to become further detached from farmers and
animals, because the PLF system itself is objectifying.
Grimace scales
 Animal welfare science
A relatively new field!
Absence of overt cruelty
↓
‘Freedom from’ overtly negative experiences
↓
‘A life worth living’?