Why Pain Is Still a Welfare Issue for Farm Animals, and How Facial Expression Could Be the Answer

Krista Mclennan

doi:10.3390/agriculture8080127

Abstract

Pain is a sensory and emotional experience that significantly affects animal welfare and has negative impacts on the economics of farming. Pain is often associated with common production diseases such as lameness and mastitis, as well as introduced to the animal through routine husbandry practices such as castration and tail docking. Farm animals are prey species which tend not to overtly express pain or weakness, making recognizing and evaluating pain incredibly difficult. Current methods of pain assessment do not provide information on what the animal is experiencing at that moment in time, only that its experience is having a long term negative impact on its behavior and biological functioning. Measures that provide reliable information about the animals’ affective state in that moment are urgently required; facial expression as a pain assessment tool has this ability. Automation of the detection and analysis of facial expression is currently in development, providing further incentive to use these methods in animal welfare assessment.

Highlights

The welfare of farm animals is receiving increased attention from the general public with a rise in the number of people concerned about how animals are used to produce food [1]
Allowing an animal to experience pain that could be alleviated, or performing painful practices intentionally on animals are amongst the highest concerns the public has about animal welfare [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Farm animals are recognized as sentient beings that have the ability to experience both pleasurable and aversive states [9], and there is legislation around the world protecting animals from pain and suffering, albeit inconsistent in level of protection and enforcement; for example, the UK’s Animal Welfare Act

Summary

Introduction

The welfare of farm animals is receiving increased attention from the general public with a rise in the number of people concerned about how animals are used to produce food [1]. Allowing an animal to experience pain that could be alleviated, or performing painful practices intentionally on animals are amongst the highest concerns the public has about animal welfare [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Pain is still a welfare problem in farm animals who are routinely subjected to painful practices, and experience production related diseases that cause pain and distress. Pain is likely the most significant affective state to impact farm animal welfare as it has significant negative effects on production and an animal’s quality of life. There is an inherent need for a valid and feasible pain assessment tool that can reliably recognize and evaluate the pain experienced by the animal

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Conclusion