Introduction to Animal Welfare

Question 1

Components of Animal Welfare

Answer 1

• welfare science - what animals NEED; human impact on welfare
• ethics - how humans SHOULD treat & care for animals
• legislation - how humans MUST treat & care for animals

Question 2

What are the 3 animal welfare concepts?

Answer 2

3 overlapping concepts of animal welfare (Fraser 2008):
1. physical state and functioning
2. psychological or mental (affective) state
3. ability to perform natural behaviours and live according to its natural state

Question 3

The Five Freedoms

Answer 3

• animal welfare = multifaceted, with links to animal health, feelings, and behaviour
• The ‘Five Freedoms’ (FAWC, 1979) define good welfare as freedom:
  1. from hunger and thirst
  2. from discomfort
  3. from pain, injury, or disease
  4. to express normal behaviour
  5. from fear and distress

Question 4

The five provisions

Answer 4

1. Freedom from thirst, hunger and malnutrition - By providing access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour
2. Freedoms from discomfort and exposure - By providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area
3. Freedom from pain, injury, and disease - By prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment
4. Freedom from fear and distress - By ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering
5. Freedom to express normal behaviour - By providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind

Question 5

How the 5 provisions align with welfare aims

Answer 5

1. good nutrition: provide ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour - minimise thirst and hunger and enable eating to be a pleasurable experience
2. good environment: provide shade/shelter or suitable housing, good air quality and comfortable resting areas - minimise discomfort and exposure and promote thermal, physical and other comforts
3. Good health: prevent or rapidly diagnose and treat disease and injury, and foster good muscle tone, posture and cardiorespiratory function - minimise breathlessness, nausea, pain and other aversive experiences and promote the pleasures of robustness, vigour, strength, and well co-ordinated physical activity
4. appropriate behaviour: provide sufficient space, proper facilities, congenial company and appropriately varied conditions - minimise threats and unpleasant restrictions on behaviour and promote engagement in rewarding activities
5. positive mental experiences: provide safe, congenial and species-appropriate opportunities to have pleasurable experiences - promote various forms of comfort, pleasure, interest, confidence and a sense of control

Question 6

What one freedom has a major effect on fitness?

Answer 6

feeding and drinking

Question 7

hunger & thirst

Answer 7

i.e. motivational states that lead to feeding & drinking
feature in most animal welfare recommendations

severe deprivation of food and water (illness, poor welfare, death) versus unrestricted access to high-quality food (weight gain, obesity)

Question 8

What does freedom of hunger & thirst include?

Answer 8

avoid negative health and welfare consequences of ‘overfeeding’ if animals have free access to high-quality food and minimize hunger potentially associated with feeding restrictions

Question 9

Hunger & feeding

Answer 9

normal feeding behaviour (structured in bouts or meals)

continuous access to high-quality feed can lead to overweight/obesity -> quantitative & qualitative food restriction & behaviour

effects of severe food restriction/undernutrition are well established (ill thrift, poor reproductive output, severe deterioration of health and eventual death)

malnutrition if food is inappropriately balanced -> problems similar to nutrient restriction, rise to obesity

Question 10

Thirst & drinking

Answer 10

• water intake to meet several physiological requirements (e.g. temperature regulation, mineral-homeostasis, excretion of end-products of digestion etc.)
  -> even S-T restriction will lead to deterioration in health and welfare

water restriction:
a. intentionally imposed (e.g. water restriction programmes; learning experiments)
b. unintentional as a result of physical, environmental and social factors (failure of water supply, water quality, competition)

Question 11

What is animal pain?

Answer 11

“Animal pain is an aversive sensory and emotional experience representing an
awareness by the animal of damage or threat to the integrity of its tissues; it changes
the animal’s physiology and behaviour to reduce or avoid the damage, to reduce the
likelihood of recurrence and to promote recovery.” (Molony, 1997)

Question 12

What is pain in relation to welfare?

Answer 12

pain = significant welfare concern that occurs under variety of circumstances, e.g. as a result of housing or husbandry or following surgical procedures or disease

Question 13

Occurrence of pain

Answer 13

• farm animals
• laboratory animals
• companion animals
• wild animals

Question 14

farm animals occurrence of pain

Answer 14

• e.g. mulesing of sheep, dehorning and branding of cattle, beak or bill trimming of poultry, and castration and tail docking of pigs; often performed without anaesthetics or analgesics

Question 15

laboratory animals occurrence of pain

Answer 15

national legislation in many countries requires that painful procedures involve the use of anesthesia and analgesia (unless there is a sound reason not to); focus often on post-procedure pain; animals models of pain research

Question 16

companion animals occurrence of pain

Answer 16

• painful surgeries on cats and dogs are normally performed under anaesthesia
• management of chronic pain (e.g. non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for treating pain due to osteo-arthritis in cats)

Question 17

wild animals occurrence of pain

Answer 17

• little research on pain in wildlife with some exceptions e.g. painful procedures performed on captive wildlife, pain associated with hunting or angling -> pain perception in fish - and more recently decapod crustaceans - increasingly studied

Question 18

Recognition of pain

Answer 18

methods of pain assessment remain relatively limited
1. physiological responses: elevations in heart rate / blood pressure and endocrine responses (indirect measures of pain); neurophysiological and electrophysiological responses (e.g. stimulation of the production of biomarkers, changes in the peripheral and central nervous system)
2. behavioural assessment: avoidance responses, vocalisations (young dependant animals, e.g. piglet castration; Leidig et al., 2009); responses directed towards the site of injury (e.g. calves licking the tail area after tail docking, and rubbing their heads after disbudding); reduced locomotion & feeding; self-medication (e.g. lame chickens; Danbury et al., 2000)

Question 19

What is fear?

Answer 19

complex concept; a negative emotion determining how humans and other animals respond to physical and social challenge; ideally adaptive, with fear behaviour serving to protect the animal from injury

Question 20

examples of fear-eliciting events

Answer 20

e.g. novelty, movement, intensity, duration, suddenness, proximity, association with previous experience, social signals & emotional contagion, social isolation

Question 21

examples of fear-related behaviours

Answer 21

e.g. active defence (attack threat), active avoidance (flight, hiding, escape), passive avoidance (immobility); head/ear postures, facial expressions, alarm calls/odours/pheromones

Question 22

examples of assessing fear

Answer 22

e.g. open-field test, novel arena test, novel predator or novel object test, confinement, handling, sudden sound/visual stimulation

Question 23

what is problem solving? (challenge & animal agency)

Answer 23

comes into action when previously applied behavioural solutions no longer work to attain a goal; rewarding to animals

Question 24

what is exploration? (challenge & animal agency)

Answer 24

information acquisition; reduce environmental uncertainties

Question 25

What is ‘appropriate challenge’? (challenge & animal agency)

Answer 25

= ‘problems that may
elicit frustration, but are potentially solvable or
escapable through the application of cognitive and
behavioural skills’. If challenges are too strong for
the skills of the animal, fear will freeze agency; if
challenges are not up to the skills, boredom will
result. An appropriate level of challenge stimulates
agency, and this engagement, in turn, enhances
competence. (Meehan & Mench, 2007)

Question 26

what is play? (challenge & animal agency)

Answer 26

spontaneous, intrinsically motivated, self-rewarding activity; performed for its own sake rather than to achieve a consummatory goal (food / information acquisition, predator escape)

Question 27

what is challenge and animal agency?

Answer 27

agency/competence concerns the integration of different levels of organisation -> ‘wholeness of animals’:
1. agency is directly rewarding for the animal
2. agency makes the animal competent to meet high challenges with high skill (which is fulfilling in humans & presumably also other animals)
3. highly competent animals deal with challenges more efficiently and successfully than less competent ones, and thus end up healthier and less fearful

when captive environments deny animals the opportunity to express their agency, they prevent animals from achieving better welfare in all three aspects

Question 28

frustration and boredom

Answer 28

1. well-fed, physically healthy animals do no automatically have good welfare -> captivity often restricts animals’ abilities to perform natural behaviour and explore novel stimuli -> affects psychological welfare by frustrating motivations
2. captive animals’ environments are often monotonous -> causes boredom
   - ‘Cognitive enrichments’ (cf. Manteuffel
   et al., 2009) to improve animal welfare,
   via cognitive stimulation (tasks or
   actions don’t necessarily have to
   resemble anything natural)