Animal welfare practice: Primary factors and objectives

Abstract

Animal welfare is a compound discipline with immediate relevance to veterinary medicine, animal research, animal husbandry and applied animal ethology. As a result of these four related disciplines, animal welfare can be recognized as essentially multi-disciplinary. It has rational principles using these collateral sciences and is substantially scientific, by virtue of its relationships. In addition, animal welfare, in practice, intrudes into all spheres of animal industry and, of course, it carries with it the ethical and regulatory dictates of public derivation. The variable forms which it has, in consequence of these several facts, make it polymorphic in nature. Animal welfare is characterized by definitive, primary factors. These stem from the fact that animal welfare has rational links with ethics, husbandry and health. The chief factors in rational animal welfare are: (1) ethical use of the animal; (2) standards of husbandry and production which meet an attainable level; (3) control of suffering for the wellbeing of the animal; (4) provision of veterinary care; (5) ecological management. With the above five factors, animal welfare can be incorporated into a global concept. As with other applied scientific disciplines, it is necessary for welfare to adopt given objectives. The relief of suffering is obviously the chief objective in animal welfare practice. Other objectives are closely allied to this. Suffering is in the clinical realm and is thus the background of many clinical matters. It is largely for such reasons that many welfare considerations are the proper domain of veterinary ethologists who can bring together behavioural and clinical expertise. Certain behavioural manifestations are unequivocal evidence of suffering through being outward expressions of mental states in clinical conditions accompanied by pain, distress or fear. Intense vocalizations, struggling, trembling, passively depressed behaviour and agitated behaviour certainly reflect states of suffering. If physico-pathological correlates are absent, evidence of suffering may relate to stress. It is essential to recognize relationships between animal behaviour and animal welfare, particularly since suffering may be evident in the former. Suffering, therefore, becomes a challenge to be addressed by modern bioethics; the latter being the new instrument of welfare.