Animal welfare and society concerns finding the missing link (original) (raw)
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Animal welfare: an aspect of care, sustainability, and food quality required by the public.
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Over the last 30 years concern about farm animal welfare has increased and has become a public issue in the Netherlands. Public discussion has stimulated research in this field, financed by both government and industry. Dutch society in general and consumers of animal products in particular, want to see high standards of welfare for production animals. Good animal welfare has gradually gained more impact in the total quality concept of the product. This will encourage scientists to continue to analyse the welfare status of animals and to come up with innovative solutions for the remaining problems. At ID-Lelystad much effort is put into farm animal welfare research. This research includes for example, the development of behavioural tests for quantifying and interpreting fear in cattle, investigations into the effects of dietary iron supply and a lack of roughage on behaviour, immunology, stress physiology, and pathology in veal calves, studies of the ontogeny of tail biting in finishing pigs and feather pecking in laying hens as well as evaluation of the welfare effects of automatic milking in dairy cows. The results of these projects contribute to concrete improvements in animal husbandry and expertise and support policy making and legislation. The animal industry as well as retailers should aim at the further implementation of this knowledge and to specify welfare standards to guarantee consumer acceptance of animal production.
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Farm animal welfare has become an important issue for the European public, especially in the last two decades when a number of crises (eg Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Avian Influenzalu) have affected farm animal populations. Public concern about this issue led the European Union to fund the Welfare Quality® project. This project aimed to develop a protocol for assessing animal welfare on farms and at slaughter plants, to identify the main animal welfare problems, and to address possible welfare improvement strategies. In fulfilling these aims, the Welfare Quality® project incorporated inputs from both science and society. This was crucial, as the public perception of what constitutes 'animal welfare' sometimes differs from animal science-based definitions. Furthermore, these differences are often interwoven with broader variations in ethical-and value-based understandings about human/non-human animal relationships. This paper presents the steps that we adopted to establish a dialogue between science and society during the construction of the Welfare Quality® assessment protocols. This dialogue involved numerous interactions between animal scientists, social scientists and members of the public. These interactions took several forms, including: meetings, conferences, workshops, websites, newsletters, interviews, focus groups, and citizen and farmers juries. Here, we address four key moments within this dialogue: the development of the initial list of twelve welfare criteria; the consumer focus groups; the development of the Welfare Quality® scoring system; and the citizen juries. In particular, we focus on the results of the focus groups and citizen juries. The focus groups were conducted in France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Hungary and the citizen juries were carried out in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Drawing on this research, we highlight the similarities and differences between societal understandings of farm animal welfare and the views of scientific experts. Furthermore, and crucially, we outline how the animal scientists took account of societal opinion when developing their farm animal welfare assessment tools.
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The welfare status of an animal is dependent on its ability to cope and exist in harmony with its environment, such that good physical and psychological health is maintained. Improving animal welfare is an increasingly important aspect of livestock production systems due, in a large extent, to increased consumer concerns about animal production practices. Animal welfare is an integrated part of quality assurance programmes for sustainable animal production, considering that welfare, health, management, economy, consumer acceptance and environmental impact are interdependent. The major welfare concerns in the livestock industry in recent years relate to the rearing and management of dairy calves, the welfare of the dairy cow, effect of husbandry management procedures on the welfare of beef cattle, rearing of sows in gestation and farrowing crates, and the broiler (meat) chicken sector. The paper will focus on scientific research underpinning these welfare concerns, with a particular ...
Farm animal welfare in the context of other society issues: toward sustainable systems
Livestock Production Science, 2001
The measurement of farm animal well-being has evolved through several stages to return to the most agreed-upon system of evaluation that uses a multidisciplinary approach. The multidisciplinary approach includes measures of animal behavior, physiology, anatomy and health and immunity. However, the multidisciplinary approach must be used in the context of other important society issues including: food safety, environmental protection, worker health and safety, economics, international trade, domestic protection, public perception and consumer economics. Only by taking into account all society issues, can the multidisciplinary approach yield useful information to the modern consumer in a manner that can develop sustainable animal production systems.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2013
2.1 Introduction 2.2 Changes in animal farming in the post World War II era and the emergence and role of animal welfare science 2.3 Development of animal welfare science 2.4 EU policy and legislation on the protection of farm animal welfare 2.5 Changes in farming and in stakeholders' concerns for animal welfare 2.6 Public perception of animal welfare in Europe 2.7 Conclusion References Chapter 3. Animal welfare: from production to consumption Henry Buller 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Citizens as consumers of welfare 3.3 The retailer response: creating and managing consumer choice 3.4 Ways forward References Chapter 4. The Welfare Quality® vision Harry Blokhuis, Isabelle Veissier, Bryan Jones and Mara Miele 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Accommodating the different animal welfare 'drivers' 4.3 The Welfare Quality® approach 4.4 Holistic approach 4.5 Science-society dialogue 4.6 Focus on animal-based measures 4.7 Welfare improvement strategies and management support 4.8 Practicality and feasibility 4.9 A European Union and global reach References 8 Improving farm animal welfare Chapter 5. Welfare Quality® principles and criteria Linda Keeling, Adrian Evans, Björn Forkman and Unni Kjaernes 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Discussion within Welfare Quality® on the principles and criteria 5.3 Discussion with society 5.4 Future implications References Chapter 6. Development of welfare measures and protocols for the collection of data on farms or at slaughter