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Animal welfare

What is animal welfare?

The term “animal welfare” is being used increasingly by corporations, consumers, veterinarians, politicians, and others. However, the term can mean different things to different people. Understandably, in the past, veterinarians and farmers have seen animal welfare chiefly in terms of the body and the physical environment.

The term animal welfare can also mean human concern for animal welfare or a position in a debate on animal ethics and animal rights. Welfare is measured by indicators including behavior, physiology, longevity, reproduction, and attitudes towards different types of animal uses.

Definitions

In Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary, animal welfare is defined as “the avoidance of abuse and exploitation of animals by humans by maintaining appropriate standards of accommodation, feeding and general care, the prevention and treatment of disease and the assurance of freedom from harassment, and unnecessary discomfort and pain.

Donald Broom defines the welfare of an animal as “its state as regards 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 in or failing to cope, and its associated feelings.” He states that “Welfare will vary over a continuum from very good to very poor and studies of welfare will be most effective if a wide range of measures is used.”

Research on aspects of animal welfare has also focused on the body, using physiological measures, such as endorphins, plasma cortisol, and heart rate, to examine how the animal is coping with its environment. However, there are limitations to seeing animal welfare only in terms of the body. One limitation is that genetics and the environment can produce desirable physical outcomes, even though the animal’s mental state is compromised.

Another limitation is that some physical parameters (heart rate, plasma cortisol) are difficult to interpret, because they can be increased by both positive and negative experiences, such as the presence of a mate and the presence of a predator.

Most would agree that animals have feelings (fear, frustration), and it has been proposed that animal welfare consists entirely in feelings and that these have evolved to protect the animal’s primary needs. Thus, if an animal feels well, it is faring well. A feelings-based approach to welfare research typically measures behavioral outcomes, such as willingness to “work” (pushing open a weighted door), and behavioral signs of fear or frustration. Such research has led to the conclusion that animals have fundamental behavioral needs that they must be allowed to satisfy for humane reasons.

The situation of laying hens illustrates how the physical, mental, and natural aspects of welfare can conflict, and the difficulty in agreeing on how best to compromise among them.

In the case of laying hens, noncage systems have been advocated, so that the birds might live more according to their nature and thus avoid the frustration of close confinement in barren cages. However, cannibalism is common in noncage systems, perhaps because hens are not adapted to living in the large groups involved in noncage systems.

Conventional cages do not permit hens to express their nature (roost at night, dust-bathe, lay eggs in seclusion). This limitation has contributed to the view that conventional cages are unacceptable and that hens bear too many of the costs of egg production without sufficient benefit.

Farm animals

Egg laying hens (chickens) in a factory farm battery cage concern for farm animals is mainly focused on factory farming, where farm animals are raised in confinement at high stocking density. Issues revolve around the limiting of natural behavior in animals (see battery cage, veal and gestation crate), and invasive procedures such as debeaking and mulesing. Other issues include methods of animal slaughter, especially ritual slaughter.

While the killing of animals need not necessarily involve suffering, the general public considers killing an animal an act that reduces its welfare. This leads to concerns with premature slaughtering, such as the chick culling. This applies in a lesser extent to all food animals.

Laboratory animals

In animal testing, the well-being of individual animals tend to be overridden by the potential benefits their sacrifice can bring to a large number of other animals or people. This utilitarian approach might allow intense suffering to be inflicted on individual animals if the trade-off is considered worthwhile, while a more welfare-based approach would afford all animals the right to a minimum standard of welfare.