After Midterm Flashcards
What is the physical environment?
= the housing and the feeding system
What is the social environment?
= the other animals and humans
How can the physical environment impact welfare?
- can prevent performance of appropriate behavior
- can be barren
- can damage or injure
- can increase likelihood of disease
- can frighten or cause discomfort
How can the social environment impact welfare?
- parent-offspring bond disrupted
- group size unusual
- stocking density (how many animals per unit of surface) or grouping is high
- group membership disrupted
- animals isolated
What are advantages of gestation stalls?
- efficient space use
- reduce aggression
- allow individual feeding
- facilitate veterinary care and safe for humans
- hygienic
Why do we see aggression in pregnant pigs?
= they fight over food because they get hungry during pregnancy
- hungry because we restrict their feed because they produce less milk later and have lameness issues and issues farrowing
What are disadvantages of gestation stalls?
- lack of space to move, turn around, perform natural behaviors
- lack of exercise (increases duration of farrowing and lameness)
- lack social contacts
- may be stressed by aggressive neighbor
- increased stress (cortisol and fear of new things)
- causes boredom and frustration (leads to abnormal behavior and apathy)
What is dynamic space (after T. Curtis)?
= space that can actually be used by an animal for movement
- i.e. without bumping into someone or something
Where are gestation stalls banned?
- in EU since 2003
- in US currently only in states like California, where not a lot of pigs are reared
- in Canada: banned for newly built facilities but not for already existing facilities - will be banned form 2024 onward
Advantages of farrowing crates?
- efficient in terms of space
- reduce piglet crushing
- facilitate veterinary care, hygienic
- safe for humans
- protect piglets against aggression from sow
What are disadvantages of farrowing crates?
- postural changes are difficult
- may restrict access to teat
- sow cannot turn around
- cortisol MAY be increased
- limited interaction between mother and piglets and limited nest building
What is nest building in sows?
- natural behavior
- sows are very motivated to perform it
- perform it right before they give birth (ca. 24 hrs)
What are the advantages of cages for hens?
- economic
- hygienic
- easy management
- easy egg collection (automatic)
- helps to control feather pecking
What are disadvantages of cages for hens?
- behavioral restrictions (foraging behavior, locomotion, perching, comfort behavior like dust bathing)
- hens show signs of frustration for about an hour before laying eggs, since they cannot isolate themselves or choose lying site
What behavior are poultry most motivated to perform?
Nesting!
What kinds of analgesics are there?
1) Opiods (narcotic analgesics) that reduce the excitability of the nervous system
2) Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAIDS) that block the production of chemicals that cause inflammation, block the body from making prostaglandins thereby reducing swelling and pain
What is the function of prostaglandins?
= they promote and resolve inflammation as a response to injury or disease
What are the cardinal signs of inflammation?
1) Dolor (pain)
2) Calor (heat)
3) Rubor (redness)
4) Tumor (swelling)
5) Functio laesa (loss of function)
What are the top reasons for lack of analgesics?
1) Difficulty recognizing pain
2) Lack of knowledge about appropriate therapy
What are the two original components of pain?
1) Nociception = physical hurt/discomfort caused by injury or disease
2) Emotional suffering = feeling/experiencing pain
What is the updated definition of pain?
= a distressing experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage with sensory, emotional, cognitive, and social components
How does pain affect animal physiology and behavior?
it changes it to
- reduce/avoid damage
- reduce likelihood of recurrence
- promote recovery
What is the theory of analogy?
= humans and animals share common ancestor and humans and vertebrates possess primitive areas of brain to process nociceptive information (medulla, thalamus, cortex, and limbic system)
but still cannot assume we all experience identical feelings just because pathways same, just indicative of subjective states
What are the most frequently injured body parts in animals?
legs and feet (hooves, claws, paws…)
What is inflammatory pain?
= single greatest cause of pain in vertebrate species and may arise in absence of a trigger like tissue damage (ex: mastitis = inflammation of mammary gland)
What is ischaemic pain?
= caused by lack of blood flow from pressure on an artery (ex.: tight bandage, traps, rubber ring castration of piglets)
What is electrical shock pain?
= occurs when animals come in contact with electrified object, activates nerves near contact point and a muscle contraction
What are the 3 components of managing post-operative pain?
1) allow animal to recover from anaesthesia
2) in anticipation of pain on recovery an analgesic is given before surgery is started
3) in anticipation of pain on recovery an analgesic is given after completion of surgery but before recovery
Which behavioral changes are useful in assessing pain?
1) Pain-specific behaviors (species specific!)
2) decline in frequency/magnitude of certain behaviors
3) choice or preference tests (drugged feed, etc)
- knowledge of individual is also important!
What are limiting factors in pain management in farm animals?
- lack of training or appreciation for significance of pain in livestock
- availability of analgesics (license, vet, animal type)
- lack of clinical trials for dosage
- limited in animals for food production
- $
What kinds of stereotypies do horses develop?
1) Locomotive
- Weaving = rocking back and forth
- stall walking = tight circles mean spines become crooked, cannot walk straight anymore
2) Oral
- crib-biting/wind-sucking/cribbing = often linked to poor nutrition and lack of exercise
What is the best enrichment for pigs?
- anything that can be destroyed or eaten: wood chips, hardwood, straw
straw also reduces oesophago-gastric ulcers by reducing acidity in their stomachs
Problem: none of these objects are compatible with manure pits in conventional farming
What are the advantages of high fibre diets in pigs?
- more time spent chewing = less time for stereotypies
- decreases gastric acidity
What is natural selection?
= process in which individuals with favorable inheritable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce = descent with modification
(and all organisms descend from an ancestor that lived in past)
Which three broad biological obersvations did Darwin explain?
1) Unity of life = all share common ancestor
2) Diversity of life
3) Match between organisms and their environment
What is artificial selection?
= domestication, taming, and breeding programs
What is domestication?
= results in changes in behavior, physiology, and morpholgy that are favorable for co-existance with humans
- it is a spectrum and continuous transition
What is unconscious artifical selection?
= no wish or expectation to permanently alter a “breed”
What is methodical artificial selection?
= breeding for specific traits (can also result in unwanted consequences)
What is prezygotic selection?
= human intervention before formation of zygote (choosing mate, etc)
What is postzygotic selection?
= animals allowed to or prevented from reproducing (any point after ovum has been fertilized)
What is weak artificial selection?
= selection pressure that is only postzygotic (culling a herd, then natural selction proceeds from modified genetic baseline)
What is strong artificial selection?
= selection is postzygotic and prezygotic = mating male offspring of high yielding dairy cow with another high yielding individual
What is taming?
= a conditioned behavioral modification (tolerate human presence better, etc) while domestication is a permanent genetic modification!
What is a breed?
= there is no universially accepted legal or biological definition
for this course = population of animals that share certain physical characteristics and are routinely bred with other populations (there may be strains within a breed - phenotypically distinct)
What is inbreeding depression?
= the reduced survivability and fertility of offspring related to one another
What is heterosis?
= when two breeds are crossed the hybrid often has increased performance (F1 generation) compared to parental generation
What causes disorders from inbreeding?
recessive homozygotic genes
What advantages does crossing breeds have?
minimize disease, increase lifespan and reproductive function
Does the federal Canadian government regulate the use of animals in science?
No, only protection against cruelty and neglect in Criminal Code (444-447) and Health of Animals Act to protect livestock
Who regulates the use of animals in science?
1) Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulates import, handling, inspection, etc
2) Canadian Council on Animal Care = national peer-review organization that sets and maintains standards for animal ethics and care in science (also certifies institutions for use of animals)
3) Provincial regulations (Animals for Research Act ON)
4) Institutions themselves (Animal Care Commitees)
When does animal use have to be reported?
1) Use of vertebrates alive or deliberately euthanized for use
2) invertebrates = only cephalopods
What are the 3 Rs?
1) Replacement
2) Reduction
3) Refinement
What does replacement mean?
= use of models, tools, other technologies to replace or avoid using animals, can be full or partial and also includes scientific merit review
What does reduction mean?
= strategies that will result in fewer animals being sued, focus on sharing data or animals across studies where possible
What does refinement mean?
= modification of husbandry and experimental procedures to minimize pain and distress: applies to housing, scientific procedures, and husbandry and better humane intervention points
What does PSE stand for?
pale, soft, exudative = a phenotype but also due to rapid post-mortem drop in pH due to short-term pre-slaughter stress (final pH around 5)
What does DFD stand for?
dark, firm, dry = slow post-mortem drop in pH due to longer duration of pre-slaughter stress (final around 6)
What are criteria that make a suitable pet?
1) no appreciable risk of harm to community, environment and owner
2) needs of species can be met adequately in captivity
3) suitable interactions with humans to ensure continued commitment (consider lifespan and how species interacts w people)
What is negative punishment?
removing attention from animal
What is positive punishment?
giving electric shock, yelling, hitting - lead to avoidance which decreases learning, changes response but not affective state, animal still doesn’t know what to do
What is attribute priming?
= when consumers are asked if they are concerned about something, they will say yes rather than no if they do not know anything about it
When does a commitment reach its highest economic value?
= when 75% fulfilled, but already of value to just make a commitment to animal welfare as company
Which EU treaty first regarded animals as beings with feelings capable of suffering?
The treaty of Amsterdam (1999)
