Animal Welfare Lecture Notes 1-15 PDF

Module 1 Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 1: This lecture was first developed for WSPA by Dr David Main (University of Bristol) in 2003. It was revised by WSPA scientific advisors in 2012 using updates provided by Dr Caroline Hewson. Slide 2: This module covers: which animals w...

Module 1 Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 1: This lecture was first developed for WSPA by Dr David Main (University of Bristol) in 2003. It was revised by WSPA scientific advisors in 2012 using updates provided by Dr Caroline Hewson. Slide 2: This module covers: which animals we are concerned about and why (looking at sentience, suffering, anthropomorphism, and death and animal welfare why animal welfare is complex (considering different scientific definitions of animal welfare; why animal welfare science involves more than veterinary medicine; the roles of science, ethics and law). Slide 3: The formal, scientific study of animal welfare began ~50 years ago, and the discipline as a whole is known as animal welfare science. However, the question of whether animals are suffering and what to do about it has mattered to people around the world for thousands of years. A common criticism of this concern has been that animals don’t have feelings as we do, and people who worry about animals may simply be attributing human feelings to animals. This attribution of human feelings to animals is called anthropomorphism. However, modern science suggests that we share many feelings with animals, to some degree. This scientific finding supports the common intuitive sense that many people around the world have always had, i.e. that animals have similar feelings to us and therefore can and do show signs of feeling fear, pain, pleasure and other emotions. The capacity of humans and other animals to have feelings that they experience as pleasant or unpleasant is called ‘sentience’. The next slide looks at this definition. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 4: Sentience is more than local sensation. “A sentient being is one that has some ability to evaluate the actions of others in relation to itself and third parties, to remember some of its own actions and their consequences, to assess risk, to have some feelings and to have some degree of awareness” (Broom, 2006). These feelings matter to the individual (Webster, 2011) and the organism is conscious of feeling something pleasant or unpleasant. Knowing that many species of animal are sentient means we know that they can suffer. There is clear scientific evidence proving all vertebrates and some invertebrates are sentient. Research into invertebrate sentience is continually advancing and we are learning of sentience and new capacities of invertebrate species every day. Our understanding of sentience is still developing; many species we now think are not sentient may actually be sentient, and therefore able to suffer. For example, there is preliminary evidence that prawns may be sentient. Slide 5: Sentience is the capacity to have feelings and to experience suffering and pleasure. It implies a level of conscious awareness. Animal sentience is the fact that animals can feel pain and suffer but also experience many positive emotions, such as joy and pleasure. Animal sentience is recognised in legislation around the world (e.g. the Lisbon treaty). Studies have shown many animals can experience complex emotions which are often thought to be unique to humans, such as grief and empathy. The acceptance of animal sentience is based on decades of scientific evidence from the fields of neuroscience, behavioural sciences and cognitive ethology. Slide 6: Knowing that many species of animal are sentient means we know that they can suffer. Knowing that a species can suffer helps us to ask careful ethical and scientific questions about how we can care for them in ways that prevent “one or more bad feelings continuing for more than a short period” (Broom & Fraser, 2007). There is growing evidence from neurobiology and behavioural studies that animals can also experience pleasant sensory input that produces positive emotions such as satisfaction. Knowing this will also inform how we care for animals. Because we do not yet know much about positive emotions, most of animal welfare science and most veterinary clinical work focuses on how to prevent animals from suffering. However, it is likely that during your professional life, there will be practical developments in how to give animals a positive experience of their lives, not simply a life that avoids suffering. Positive experiences are what make an animal’s life a life worth living. An example of a positive Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 2 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes experience could be, when training working animals, if you ask an animal to lift something or do something they are not used to doing, timing the request with a treat will mean the animal associates the task with a positive reward. Slide 7: Anthropomorphism is generally seen as a bad thing by scientists. However, some now acknowledge that we can use human needs as a starting point for considering what animals may need in order to have a good life or, at least, to avoid suffering. This is called ‘critical anthropomorphism’. An example of this is pain: as humans, we find surgery very painful, especially if no anaesthesia or analgesia is used. It is reasonable to expect the same to be true of many animals. Viñuela-Fernandez et al. (2007) studied the anatomical responses of farm and companion animals to drugs such as morphine; this proved that these animals can feel pain. However, it is essential not to rely on anthropomorphism alone, without science and other information. For example, many pet cats are not friendly to humans and do not seem to enjoy interacting much with their owners; this is because of their paternal genetics and early experience (McCune, 1995). For most people, the presence of a companion is beneficial, and they assume that if they get a pet cat, the cat will enjoy the owner’s companionship and want a lot of close contact, e.g. stroking. However, for many cats, this close attention from their owners is unpleasant, and those cats tend to be independent, not sleep on the owner’s lap, etc. In this case, the original assumption that the cat will like social contact is incorrect. Slide 8: As vets, we are concerned primarily with the welfare of domesticated and captive wild species that humans keep as companions, for food, for research, or for entertainment. The concerns include: how those animals are cared for (including when neglect or cruelty may occur) how they are used, e.g. milking cows; shearing sheep and llamas; experimental procedures in research animals; activities required of animals in sport (e.g. dressage, rodeo) and entertainment (e.g. circuses, dog fighting) how they are handled and housed during transport and at sales how those animals are killed so that they do not suffer during the lead-up to their death and during the killing process (e.g. the slaughter of farm animals for meat, euthanasia because of illness, or killing for population control). The logic of sentience means that we must be concerned when wild animals are killed because they are pests, or for food (e.g. ocean fish) or sport, that those killing processes are also humane. Vets are not normally involved in the care of those wild species and do not have oversight of their killing. However, because the profession is devoted to animal care, it is important to be aware of the issues; other lectures in this course summarise them. (Adapted from Fraser & MacRae, 2011.) Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 3 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 9: People disagree about whether it is right for humans to kill animals. However, the state of death is not a welfare issue in its own right because welfare concerns the quality of an animal’s life (suffering, etc), and when the animal is dead, he/she can no longer have experiences. Humans usually want to have as long a life as possible and to avoid a poor quality of life. However, with animals we are usually concerned with giving them a good quality of life, but not in keeping them alive at all costs. Much of the time we end their lives for our own purposes, and the manner in which the animal dies is an important welfare issue. For example, the method of slaughter of food animals should, ideally, cause instantaneous death. For example, farmed fish are stunned and then killed instantly. However, in ocean fishing, the fish are caught en masse and most die relatively slowly, by suffocation. Although being dead is not a welfare concern, a high death rate in a group of animals is a welfare concern. This is because, if many animals are dying, this may indicate poor husbandry or another problem under which many animals become diseased – and therefore experience bad welfare. Slide 10: We have now clarified what animals can suffer (sentient ones) and what we mean by sentience and suffering. We have also seen that critical anthropomorphism can be a helpful starting point if we are concerned about animals suffering. Finally, we have seen that death itself is not a welfare concern, but how animals die is very important. We shall now look in detail at the definition of animal welfare. Slide 11: In being concerned about animal suffering, we are concerned about what effect our treatment of animals has on their experience of their lives. Different people have different ideas about how we should treat animals, and they understand animal welfare in different ways. A common view has been that if animals are healthy, their welfare must be good. However, animals can be healthy but still not have a good life experience. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 4 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 12: Most scientists agree that there are three areas to be considered when assessing animal welfare. The first area is very familiar to vets: physical factors including the animal’s physiology, e.g. growth rate or disease. For example, mild early tumours or infections can lead to detectable physical problems for a dog without the dog having any mental problems. This is often referred to as physical functioning – when animals are not functioning well, their owners usually ask the vet to find out why and seek to change it. The second area overlaps heavily with the first and concerns the animal’s mental state, including their preferences and their feelings. As vets, we are also familiar with an animal’s feelings as they relate to health and how we can make ill animals feel better (for example, we have drugs to treat nausea and pain). However, other feelings in animals that an animal would choose to avoid can occur without there being any disease or production problem present, e.g. fear and anxiety during handling, but these may not necessarily be associated with any physical abnormality. Often, because owners have not noticed that their animals might have these feelings, they have not asked vets to advise on them, and veterinary medicine in turn has not concerned itself with them very much. We can distinguish between welfare affecting the physical or mental state of animals. However, most clinical diseases and injuries induce both physical damage to the body and some degree of mental pain or discomfort. The third area also overlaps with the other two, especially with the mental state of the animal. It concerns an animal’s species-typical behaviours (e.g. hens dust-bathing; pigs rooting; horses pair-bonding to groom; polar bears walking for many kilometres as part of their hunting behaviour) and its environment – whether it is kept in the sort of natural environment in which it evolved. This ‘naturalness’ area of animal welfare has not been a traditional part of veterinary work, because often it is not an obvious cause of ill-health. If an animal is kept in a way that does not allow them to express important behaviours, the animal can develop abnormal behaviours, and may suffer from frustration and other negative emotions as a result. Furthermore, restrictions on behaviour and environment may lead to physical effects, sometimes severe. It is also important to understand that just as there are aspects of naturalness that can lead to good welfare, for example, having the ability to express natural behaviours, there are also aspects of naturalness that can lead to poor welfare. For example, it can be natural for wild animals to starve, be diseased or feel extreme pain. So we can see that these three areas of animal welfare may or may not overlap with each other. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 5 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 13: This slide illustrates these three areas of animal welfare and how they can overlap. Any significant compromise in one area tends to affect the other two, although this may not always be the case. For example, if a single hen is housed in a wire cage on her own and has food, water, a perch, a nesting box, and an area for dust-bathing, her physical functioning is likely to be good. Her mental state is likely to be good too, although she may feel frustration because of social isolation which may occur even if other birds are close by, in other cages. She will also be able to perform important behaviours like nesting before she lays. However, some people would still have concerns for her welfare because keeping a chicken in a cage is not ‘natural’. The cages actually impact on other areas of welfare including the health of the animal, e.g. wired floors are likely to cause injuries; if an animal is frustrated then he or she may self-mutilate or perform stereotypical behaviours, which can cause physical damage. So in this example, the chicken’s welfare is affected in terms of all three of the ‘naturalness’, ‘physical’ and ‘mental’ areas of welfare. These three areas of welfare should never be looked at in isolation and we should focus on the centre of the diagram where they all overlap. It requires a holistic approach to welfare, incorporating all three and understanding the relationships between the areas. A different example is a sheep which is farmed extensively but has a chronic infection of the foot. Some aspects of naturalness of the sheep’s welfare will be very good. However, his/her welfare will be affected in terms of: physical area (functioning: slower movement, weight loss because the animal is unable to access enough good grass or extra feed), and mental area (feelings: pain, hunger, perhaps fear, if separated from the flock, and therefore is more vulnerable to predators) the overlap between physical functioning and mental state. These examples illustrate that animal welfare is a complex concept and that people – including scientists – may not agree on an animal’s welfare because they value the three areas of welfare differently. We will now look very briefly at some of these earlier scientific definitions. Slide 14: The earliest definitions concerned physical areas of animal welfare, particularly in connection with how an animal might cope with stress and how the body responds to stress physiologically. Professor Don Broom developed this view of welfare (see slide). McGlone (1993) proposed an apparently more extreme view: that welfare is only poor when survival or reproduction are impaired by a physical problem (see slide). Similarly, Moberg (1985) argued: “...the only defensible measurement of well-being in animals is to determine if the animal is suffering from stress. Furthermore, I believe that the most appropriate indicator of stress is the appearance of a pre-pathological state.” Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 6 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 15: Other scientists argued for mental states, notably Professor Ian Duncan, as in this slide. Professor Marion Dawkins made a similar argument: “To be concerned about animal welfare is to be concerned with the subjective feelings of animals, particularly the unpleasant subjective feelings of suffering and pain” (Dawkins, 1988). More recently, researchers as well as vets, owners and others are all acknowledging that an absence of negative feelings does not mean an animal’s welfare is good. To have good welfare, it is important to have positive feelings such as happiness, safety, satisfaction, etc. (Yeates & Main, 2008; Mellor et al., 2009). Behavioural studies and research in neurobiology using techniques such as brain imaging are beginning to indicate when animals experience positive feelings, and how much the opportunity to experience positive feelings matters to animals (Mellor et al., 2009). However, the idea is not that we have to prevent animals from ever having any negative feelings. That is unrealistic and unnatural: negative feelings have adaptive value because they motivate the animal to avoid, or escape from, harmful situations. Rather, the goal is not to keep animals in such a way that they experience only negative feelings and cannot remove themselves from that situation or adapt to it (Keeling et al., 2011). Slide 16: In the 1960s, there was widespread public concern about the effect on animals of the intensification of farming. In the UK, the government set up a committee of scientists and others to investigate the matter. The committee was named after its chair, Brambell, and they issued a report known as the Brambell Report. One of the comments in that report was: “In principle, we disapprove of a degree of confinement of an animal which necessarily frustrates most of the major activities which make up its natural behaviour” (Brambell Committee, 1965). In another example of how some authorities stress the importance of natural living, the scientists Barnard and Hurst (1996) argued that species have evolved behaviours and physiology that enable them to survive and to reproduce and that that is the basis of natural selection. They concluded that domestic animals should be kept in ways that allow them to perform the behaviours, i.e. in accordance with natural selection. The American ethicist Professor Bernie Rollin has also argued for this. He noted that animals have an inherent nature (in Greek, telos), or “genetic traits manifest in breed and temperament”, and he argues that, to have good welfare, animals need to be able to fulfil their nature (Rollin, 1993). Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 7 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 17: Related to mental states and aspects of naturalness is the idea that animals need to perform certain highly motivated behaviours that are typical of their species. Those behaviours would have developed in their wild ancestors to enable them to obtain essential resources and therefore, to survive (e.g. in calves, the act of suckling to ingest milk from the mother; in pre-parturient sows, building a secluded nest in which to give birth). The need to show a behaviour originates in the brain and therefore it is generally understood now that if animals do not live in an environment that permits these behaviours the animals are likely to experience negative emotions and therefore to suffer. This has given rise to the idea that animals have behavioural needs and that being in an environment that enables animals to express the behaviours can be a source of positive emotion (reviewed by Widowski, 2010). Slide 18: These examples show that animal welfare is a complex concept with three important areas – physical, mental and aspects of naturalness. The best definition therefore seems to be one that combines all three areas. That is what the World Organisation for Animal Health uses. The Organisation is known by its French acronym OIE (Office International des Epizooties) and is based in Paris. The OIE represents around 178 countries and territories, and is taking the lead in promoting animal welfare standards around the world. Its statement regarding welfare is on this slide, and it stresses the importance of scientific evidence. This definition covers all three aspects of animal welfare: Functioning (Physical) coping; healthy; disease prevention; nutrition Mental (Feelings) comfortable; safe; not suffering from unpleasant states; humane handling and slaughter Aspects of Naturalness coping; able to express innate behaviour. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 8 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 19: Another set of key statements that combines all elements of welfare are known by the term the Five Freedoms. The Five Freedoms were based on the concerns and recommendations laid out in the Brambell Report (discussed above), published in the UK in 1965. They are listed on the slide, and you can see that they also relate to physical functioning, mental state/feelings and natural behaviour. The Five Freedoms overlap with the three aspects of welfare: physical, mental and naturalness. For example, to achieve functioning we need freedom from injury and disease, freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from thermal discomfort, freedom from fear and distress, and so on. Slide 20: We started this lecture by clarifying that being concerned about animal welfare means being concerned about animal suffering. We defined suffering, and we saw that only sentient animals can suffer. We have now also clarified what animal welfare is, and that it is a complex concept that includes the physical, mental and aspects of naturalness. We have also seen that because veterinary medicine has not traditionally been concerned with animal behaviours that are not signs of disease, veterinary medicine has not traditionally covered all of animal welfare. Individuals value these various aspects of animal welfare differently. That is what makes animal welfare controversial, and the arguments have not changed over many millennia. We will now look briefly at the historical context, and see how animal welfare science developed. Slide 21: Taking India as our first example, concern for animals is part of the ancient religions practised there. Concern is motivated in part by a belief in reincarnation, that is, that the animal may be a reincarnated human soul, and that your own actions as a human will affect how you are reincarnated. Another example from India is the Bishnoi tribe in Riajasthan, as on the slide. Slide 22: In China, Confucianism includes concern about animal suffering. India and China are only two examples from around the world. Today, the dominant ethical arguments about how we should treat animals are rooted in Western thought, starting with the philosophies of the Ancient Greeks, with influential additions from thinkers in Britain and other European countries in the 18th and 19th centuries. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 9 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 23: Fraser has pointed out that all today’s arguments – for example, about whether or not to eat animals, and what our duty of care is to animals – are the same concerns that the Ancient Greeks had. Some of these are outlined here. Slide 24: Western thought developed following that era and in Britain in the 18th century, a philosopher called Jeremy Bentham pointed out that treating animals well was nothing to do with whether or not they could talk or think, but simply whether they could suffer. In 1822, Britain passed what was probably the first animal protection law in Western democracies. However, in non- Christian religions such as Islam and Judaism, there were already religious laws in place about treating animals well. Slide 25: Moving forward to modern-day concerns, these grew with the development of modern intensive agriculture in the 1950s and 1960s in Europe and North America in the aftermath of the Second World War. The focus was on making animals more productive (e.g. with faster growth rates, producing more milk, producing larger litters) so that people could afford to eat more nutritiously and so enjoy better health. The systems typically involve housing animals in large numbers, and veterinary medicine was and is an important part of the animals’ welfare there, because such housing allows infectious diseases to spread quickly. However, the development and use of veterinary vaccines and antibiotics prevents them from suffering in this way. As other nations develop economically today, they too want affordable, nutritious animal- based food, and national agricultural practices are drawing on and adapting the intensive approaches developed in Europe. Two examples are: 1. In sub-Saharan Africa: cross-breeding zebu and other indigenous breeds, to increase their fertility and other traits while retaining their suitability for being managed by pastoralist farmers, under the local climatic conditions (Scholtz et al., 2011). 2. In Asia: there is rapidly growing demand for a more Western diet in most Asian countries, notably China and India; that is, for a diet including more meat and fish, rather than traditional rice/carbohydrate-based meals. There is also growing demand for dairy products: by 2006, cheese dominated the growth in dairy consumption in both Malaysia and Japan, perhaps because of its use in burgers at fast-food outlets such as McDonald’s and Wendy’s (Pingali, 2006). Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 10 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 26: As intensive husbandry developed in the Europe and the USA in the 1960s, there was growing public concern about its effects on animals. In the UK, a book on the subject, Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison, caused such concern that the British government called for a committee of scientists, vets and others to examine the question. That was the Brambell Committee, which published the Brambell Report, which was mentioned earlier. There was also public concern about other animals under human care or influence e.g. the use of wild-caught primates for research, and the need to conserve wild species. Slide 27: In light of concern for farmed animals in particular, and the Brambell Committee’s report, scientists began to formally investigate questions of animal welfare. The discipline is known as animal welfare science, and it has arisen out of specific questions that the public want answered, e.g. do hens need to dust-bathe as they would in the wild? Why do piglets bite each other’s tails in intensive systems? Do dairy calves suffer if they are removed from their mothers after 24 hours? Because animal welfare science arose out of public concern, rather than from general curiosity about the world, it is a “mandated science” (Fraser, 2008a). Slide 28: Animal welfare science is now a well-established field, and this slide gives some examples of that. The professional group for researchers in animal welfare is the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE) (which was co-founded by a veterinarian, Andrew Fraser).The logo is at the top of the slide, in green. The other images show examples of the scientific and academic publications on the topic of animal welfare. There at least 50 books on the topic in English; you will see some of them in the reference list at the end of this module. There are several peer-reviewed scientific journals that include a lot of animal welfare research, and more and more of this research is appearing in the veterinary clinical journals as well. In addition, there are two principal peer-reviewed journals that are dedicated to animal welfare science. They are Animal Welfare (shown on the slide) and Applied Animal Behaviour Science, which is the ISAE’s publication. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 11 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 29: The importance of animal welfare internationally is reflected by the OIE, which we mentioned earlier when discussing definitions of animal welfare. The OIE’s member countries have authorised the organisation to “take the lead internationally on animal welfare with guidelines and recommendations”. The OIE has an Animal Welfare Working Group which holds international conferences every three or four years, e.g. Egypt in 2008, Kuala Lumpur in 2012. Since May 2005, the World Assembly of OIE Delegates has adopted seven animal welfare standards in the Terrestrial Animal Health Code and two animal welfare standards in the OIE Aquatic Animal Health Standards Code (Aquatic Code) (OIE, 2011b). The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) now has an online resource for international and national information related to farm animal welfare, called the Gateway to Farm Animal Welfare (FAO, 2011). Slide 30: Animal welfare is also an aspect of the One Health Initiative. This is an international collaboration among all health professionals, including veterinarians. It aims to expand knowledge of diseases in people and animals worldwide, especially because several diseases put both animals and people at risk. Animal welfare is involved here because disease affects feelings and functioning so much. Also, mass slaughter is sometimes used to prevent the spread of some diseases to animals and people. When this is urgent (e.g. during outbreaks of avian flu) animals can suffer at the time of slaughter because personnel are not trained to handle them humanely. The One Health Initiative is supported by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). Slide 31: We now move on to how veterinary medicine and animal welfare science overlap. We saw earlier that veterinary medicine already concerns the functioning and feelings aspects of animal welfare, through the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease. Infectious diseases have been particularly important, especially in intensively farmed animals, and vets have been very important in this aspect of animal welfare. For example, there are now at least 60 vaccines against major infectious diseases in the main domestic species (e.g. tetanus in horses; Newcastle disease in poultry; clostridial diseases in sheep; rabies in many species; distemper in dogs). These diseases would otherwise cause widespread suffering. Vets continue to research infectious diseases and to advise governments and individual owners about the best use of these vaccines, so that many millions of animals are protected each year. As research has revealed more about how animals can suffer for reasons other than infection or other disease, vets in different countries are including this consideration more and more. Because of the rapid expansion in knowledge of health and diseases – infectious and otherwise – in all veterinary species, veterinary medicine has not always kept up with Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 12 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes developments in the other fields relevant to animal welfare, especially the field of applied animal behaviour. Vets have always understood a lot about normal animal behaviour as it relates to physical health: many clinical signs of disease are changes in normal behaviour (e.g. a calf that is mouth-breathing instead of breathing quietly through his/her nose; a horse that is lame, i.e. not bearing weight evenly on all four legs). Vets also use an animal’s behaviour to assess how much pain he/she may be feeling, and to determine the appropriate mixture of analgesic drugs to give. What is still quite new for veterinarians is the growing scientific knowledge about behavioural signs that occur because the animal’s handling or housing are not appropriate. Similarly, there is more and more research arising on the importance of positive emotions in animal welfare; this research may in time tell us how, as vets, we can advise animal owners about how to facilitate more positive experiences for animals. Slide 32: Today, countries worldwide agree that animal welfare is important, and animal welfare science is an established scientific discipline. In addition to the many government research departments and non-veterinary university faculties that teach and study animal welfare, more and more vet schools also have research groups and postgraduate training in animal welfare. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) recommends that animal welfare is a required Day 1 competency for all veterinary graduates (OIE, 2011c). That means that when you graduate as a vet, you should be able to: “…explain animal welfare and the related responsibilities of owners, handlers, veterinarians and others responsible for the care of animals; identify animal welfare problems and participate in corrective actions; and know where to find up-to-date and reliable information regarding local, national and international animal welfare regulations/standards in order to describe humane methods for: animal production; transport; and slaughter for human consumption and killing for disease control purposes.” Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 13 Module 1: Introduction to Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 33: Many people today agree that we have an obligation towards animals. Their reasons for this may differ. For example, for some people it is because animals have inherent value. For others, it is because animals have economic value to us, i.e. are useful to us for food, etc. For others, it is because of empathy, i.e. concern that animals can suffer. For others, it is because the species of animal is becoming rare and we have the power to prevent it from dying out. These different reasons for showing concern for animals mean that, in turn, there are different views about what our obligations to animals entail. That is the field of ethics – how we should treat animals. Other lectures will look more closely at ethics, and at how the law on animals may or may not reflect these concerns. Slide 34: To sum up this introduction to animal welfare: Animal welfare is concerned with how sentient animals experience their lives, in terms of their physical functioning, mental state and natural behaviours. To understand these three aspects requires science – hence animal welfare science. Animal welfare is affected by people’s values – how they think we should treat animals, and what they think is important for animals. Science helps us to understand some of these issues. Ethics then weighs that knowledge with human desires (e.g. to earn a living by farming; to clear land and build houses), so that we can decide how we should treat animals. That is the field of animal ethics. Related to this, animal welfare also involves the law, i.e. society’s rules about how we must treat animals. Ideally, animal welfare law should reflect the decisions that society has reached – using science and ethical reasoning –about how we ought to treat animals. However, often animal welfare law may set a low standard of care because there may not be public money available to enforce higher standards or because the public is not aware of welfare problems or is not willing to spend money on enforcing higher standards of welfare. The rest of this course will examine these three aspects of animal welfare – science, ethics and law – and show you how they apply in practice. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 14 Module 2 Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes Slide 1: This lecture was first developed for WSPA by Dr David Main (University of Bristol) in 2003. It was revised by WSPA scientific advisors in 2012 using updates provided by Dr Caroline Hewson. Slide 2: In our discussion of the definition of animal welfare in the first lecture, we mentioned the Five Freedoms. The freedoms are a very important landmark in scientific and ethical approaches to animal welfare, and many current welfare assessment tools have been developed from them. So, in today’s lecture we are going to look at them in some detail. Slide 3: If you ask someone how they are, they often respond with a single phrase or concept, like “pretty good”, or “OK” or “terrible”. We can rank these on a continuum from ‘good’ to ‘poor’, as you see on the slide. If you ask for further detail, and try to determine the cause behind the person’s answer, you will usually get a reply that incorporates different feelings about various aspects of the person’s life. For example, an individual may feel that work is good but his/her personal life is only reasonable, etc. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes Slide 4: In other words, although we might be able to describe how we are feeling overall, this is affected by many components that may be independent of each other. For example, the comfort of your chair is not related to how hungry you feel; however, they both affect how you feel at any one moment. So we can see that human welfare is a combination of independent components, some of which may be good and some of which bad. The Five Freedoms are likewise a list of components of animal welfare. Slide 5: The UK’s Farm Animal Welfare Council proposed the Five Freedoms in 1992, using the recommendations from an earlier government enquiry known as the Brambell Committee (1965). Each of the Five Freedoms can overlap with the others. For example, if an animal is hungry, he or she will seek food and eat it – this is normal behaviour. If the animal cannot find food, or if the environment does not allow him/her to show normal food-seeking behaviour, s/he may become distressed. Therefore, if animals are not free from hunger and are not free to express normal behaviour, they may also not be free from distress. All life ends in death; therefore, freedom from death is not something that we can provide to any organism. However, we kill most of the animals that we keep. The issue of whether or not we should kill animals is an ethical one. The avoidance of death in animals has an ethical value for many cultures. Moreover, from the animal’s point of view, animals have an interest in life and, generally, will try to avoid death. Even though we cannot guarantee freedom from death to any animal, the manner of an animal’s death does concern animal welfare. For example, if someone keeps a chameleon as a pet and does not feed the animal properly, the animal will die of malnutrition and associated diseases. In that case, the animal’s death comes about because several of the Five Freedoms have been compromised (freedom from hunger, freedom from disease, freedom from distress and, possibly, freedom to express normal behaviour). Slide 6: Here you see each of the freedoms on a scale from poor welfare to good welfare. The ‘Poor’ side of the spectrum signifies that the particular need has not been met. Moving towards the ‘Good’ end, we see that the need (or freedom) has been fulfilled. As you see, an animal may have different levels of each of the Five Freedoms – some of the aspects may be good, while others may be poor. This diagram suggests that we can assess each area and then come up with an overall welfare score. However, this is not as simple as it sounds. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 2 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes Slide 7: This approach relies on the underlying assumption that welfare lies on a continuum, as shown on this slide. Under that assumption, welfare ranges from ‘Poor’ to ‘Adequate’ to ‘Good’. At the ‘Poor’ end, the animal’s environment is such that the animal has largely negative experiences and constant suffering so that his/her life is not worth living. With better care and a better environment, animal welfare may be ‘Adequate’: the animal may have few negative experiences, but no positive ones either. That is thought be a life worth living. At the other end of the continuum, welfare is ‘Good’, i.e. the animal has mainly positive experiences and not just the absence of negative ones (FAWC, 2009). There is ongoing research into this, and some scholars argue that this view of welfare is too simplistic. However, for you as a vet in practice, it remains a matter of assessing specific aspects of welfare and then making your best judgment of how relatively good or bad they are in comparison with similar situations, or the situation as it was previously. Module 9 will explore this in more detail. Slide 8: Here we see dairy cows who are housed. Housing makes it easier to safeguard cows’ health and production in climates where cold, wet weather makes it impossible to manage the cows on pasture. However, housing restricts cows’ normal ranging behaviour. Therefore, housing keeps cows free from some diseases, but it reduces their freedom to express normal behaviours. That is, it can also predispose them to diseases such as mastitis and foot disorders, both of which can be very painful and which can be present at levels of 20 per cent or higher in dairy farms in many parts of the world. For this reason, a survey in New Zealand suggested that farmers in most parts of that country should not invest in housing because it would create more welfare and production (and therefore economic) problems than it would solve. Slide 9: Some restrictions of normal behaviour, such as farrowing crates, are obvious. Farrowing crates restrict movement (in order to prevent piglet crushing) and this prevents many aspects of normal behaviour, such as maternal behaviour and social interaction with other adults. However, some restrictions are only highlighted after scientific investigation. For example, the lying surface in a cubicle shed can affect the lying time as much as the design of the cubicles (see next slide). Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 3 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes Slide 10: This study on cows assessed the time they spent lying in a 24-hour period on different lying surfaces in a cubicle shed. Cows provided with a soft compressible bed would lie down for about 70 per cent of the time, which is similar to a cow grazing at pasture. However, this time was reduced when a harder rubber mat or concrete surfaces were used. These harder surfaces, therefore, restrict normal behaviour. Furthermore, this restriction of lying behaviour has health implications – increased lameness is associated with reduced lying times. Slide 11: The Five Freedoms are ideal states that are extremely difficult to achieve. For example, some freedoms may conflict. To be free of disease sometimes requires treatment, and this induces fear during handling. To allow an animal to express normal behaviour will inevitably cause distress on certain occasions during ‘normal’ social interactions. When one of the freedoms is compromised (e.g. during handling and/or during normal social interactions), this can have both short-term and long-term negative effects on an animal’s welfare. See Balcombe et al. (2004) for more information on this. In farming, as in the wild, it is impossible to fully provide the Five Freedoms at all times. Sometimes it is undesirable to satisfy them all, for example: if a dog is free to express normal behaviour, the dog should be allowed to chase and kill sheep or cats – but this is undesirable; restraining farm animals inevitably causes some distress, but is necessary in order to vaccinate them, trim their feet and keep them free from disease. Clearly, the distress of restraint should be minimised, but some animals will feel it more than others, no matter how good and concerned the stockperson. Such compromises are inevitable. The only way for wild or domesticated animals to avoid some form of welfare compromise at one time or another is for the animals not to exist at all. Therefore the more realistic question is: what is the extent and the nature of the compromises that we should accept? This is an ethical question, which science informs but cannot answer on its own. The question of which compromises are acceptable, and why, causes a lot of disagreement in society. Additionally, the list of Five Freedoms emphasises avoiding negative experiences for the animal (there are four ‘freedoms from’), and does not promote positive experiences. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 4 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes Slide 12: The Five Freedoms are intended primarily to prevent suffering, not to completely eliminate stress. As such, they are a list of the outcome of good husbandry. As a result of the widespread popularity of the Five Freedoms as a basis for assessment, they have been adapted and modernised in various forms to help the public, legislators and farmers everywhere to understand how best to care for captive animals. Five examples of this are: 1. The development of the Welfare Quality® project to assess the welfare of farm animals from birth to death. The project involves the EU and four South American countries, and the areas of welfare assessment were developed directly from the Five Freedoms. We will cover this in Module 9. 2. The veterinary literature increasingly mentions the Five Freedoms: of the five, vets have been most concerned with the first three, i.e. freedom from hunger and thirst freedom from discomfort freedom from pain, injury and disease. However, there is growing appreciation that all five are interrelated. For example, a recent review of ocular pain (Williams 2010) in livestock points out that “diseases that compromise vision have significant effects on the freedom to behave normally and increase fear and distress. We should continually reflect on how these conditions are affecting all five of these freedoms”. In a completely different paper (Jongman 2007), the Five Freedoms are cited as the basis for assessing the welfare of indoor-only cats. 3. The third example is from international finance: the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group supplies loans to businesses in developing countries. This includes livestock businesses, and the Corporation has publications specifically on the topic of animal welfare. The one cited on the slide states “At the project appraisal stage the International Finance Corporation (IFC) will review and assess how the applicant addresses or plans to address various animal welfare aspects. IFC will decline, at their discretion, selected projects where the system is incompatible with the Five Freedoms” (p.17, World Bank, 2006). 4. The fourth example is from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). We mentioned the OIE in the Module 1, and you will recall that it has ~178 member countries which have authorised the organisation to “take the lead internationally on animal welfare with guidelines and recommendations”. The opening statement of the chapter on animal welfare within the OIE’s Terrestrial Animal Health Code says that “the internationally recognised ‘Five Freedoms’ provide valuable guidance in animal welfare” (OIE, 2011). Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 5 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes 5. Private retailers also use the Five Freedoms as a basis for assuring customers that the food they are buying has come from animals who were well treated. For example, the international retailer Marks & Spencer specifies “ensuring that farming systems meet as many of the Five Freedoms as possible”. Slide 13: In order to know exactly which aspects of animals’ experience we might measure in welfare assessment, it helps to break it down into a sequence, as shown in this slide. Here we see that animals get sensory input from their environment – e.g. they see, hear and touch aspects of their housing or the events around them. Next, the brain evaluates this sensory input in accordance with the animal’s experience, genetics, etc. For example, the brain may evaluate the input as novel (e.g. the arrival of a new animal), or as a potential threat (e.g. the vet), or as a source of pleasure (e.g. the approach of another animal for mutual grooming or play), or as neutral (e.g. the tractor passing by). The brain’s evaluation may, then, create an emotion that is negative (e.g. anxiety on seeing the vet or seeing a new animal), or positive (e.g. pleasure because of anticipated grooming or play). Or, there may be no new emotion because the sensory input is neutral (e.g. the sound of the tractor). Next, the body responds to the emotion, as appropriate. For example, fear can increase the heart rate and cause the animal to behave differently (e.g. stop grazing, get up, run away, etc.). Pleasure can also increase the heart rate and cause the animal’s behaviour to change: he or she may also stop grazing or get up, but will probably approach rather than run away. Therefore, the final result of this sequence is that the animal can adapt to its environment and the events there and thus ‘survive’ in a very general sense. For example, the animal ignores the tractor and does not waste energy avoiding it, because he or she has learned that it is benign. However, he or she does expend energy trying to get away from the vet (not knowing that the vet’s diagnosis and treatment may be what he or she needs to survive). There are two important concepts applied to the adaptive process – ‘homeostasis’ and ‘allostasis’. We shall now look briefly at those, and at the central role of the brain. Slide 14: First, we will discuss homeostasis: animals need to maintain their cellular environment around narrow set points, so that the vital organs keep functioning. This steady internal state that is necessary for the basic processes of life is called ‘homeostasis’, which literally means ‘same state’. Maintaining homeostasis is an automatic process involving central control by the brain. An example is the pH of the blood: in domestic mammals, blood pH needs to be kept within a very narrow range, otherwise the vital organs do not function as well and this may become life-threatening. Consequently, the body has sensors that enable the appropriate excretion of Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 6 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes bicarbonate and acid ions, via breath and urine respectively, so that the pH is maintained at the set point of 7.35 to 7.45. At the cellular level, homeostasis is essential. However, the concept does not adequately describe how animals adapt in order to survive. That broader adaptive process is called ‘allostasis’. Allostasis literally means ‘other state’: it is a state of stability that is achieved through change. Hence it is different from homeostasis, which is a steady state that revolves around unchanging, narrow set points. ‘Stability through change’ comes about because the brain has a memory: it evaluates sensory input against its existing information, so that the animal can respond appropriately to the events in future. Those events might be part of the life cycle, such as pregnancy, or they might be a completely novel challenge, such as the first time a cow experiences milking by a machine. In all cases, the animal has an expanding repertoire of physiological and behavioural adaptations that enable him/her to keep functioning within his/her environment. The brain, memory and emotions play a central role in ‘driving’ adaptive changes in physiology and behaviour, which we can then measure in welfare assessment. So, we will look at the brain next. Slide 15: The brain is of interest in regard to welfare, because of emotions. We cannot assess emotions directly in animals. However, we can now assess their brain activity under specific conditions and compare that with the activity in humans who report themselves to be feeling a particular emotion. For example, the main picture on the slide shows typical human brain activity when a person is feeling sad. The insert shows a guinea pig’s brain activity when the animal is showing distress on being separated from others. You can see how similar the anatomical circuits are in both brains; both involve clusters of neurons within structures such as the PAG (parahippocampal gyrus) and the DMT (dorsal medial thalamus), both of which we see in each picture here. Research on the neurobiology of emotions is growing, but is not exhaustive for all our domestic species in all husbandry conditions. However, close similarities with human studies, as illustrated on the slide, allow us to infer what emotions the brain may generate in animals that are in particular conditions. [This content was developed as part of the Animal Welfare Assessment Course by the Animal Behaviour and Welfare Group at Michigan State University, which is being shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Content taken from Panksepp, J. (2003).] Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 7 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes Slide 16: Going back again to our framework: let us now look at the aspects of the four elements of an animal’s experience we can measure, so that we can assess welfare. Slide 17: First, environment and resources create sensory input. As animal owners, we provide animals with resources, e.g. we breed them to have a particular genetic makeup, we house them in a certain way. Also, various events happen around our animals during the day. There are regular daily events such as the change from day to night, or the arrival of food. Other events will be occasional, such as a visit from the vet and a clinical examination, or transport to market. There are also internal events, such as the animal’s bladder filling with urine. All these events and resources create ongoing external and internal sensory stimulation for the animal. We cannot easily measure that sensory input. However, we can record the resources that are available to them, and many of the events in their environment. Next, the animal’s brain evaluates the sensory input. For example, is what the animal sees familiar or not? If it is familiar, is it associated with anything threatening, painful or pleasant? The brain’s evaluation gives rise to emotions (e.g. fear, happiness) and to physical feelings (e.g. pain, excitement, nausea). The animal’s body responds to these feelings, both physiologically (e.g. increased heart rate) and behaviourally (e.g. urinating, vomiting, hiding). There is no easy way to measure their emotions and feelings for welfare assessment. However, we can measure their responses. Moving down our slide, we see that these responses enable the animal to adapt to the initial event as appropriate, and therefore to survive. Survival, or death rate, can be a very crude indication of welfare within a group of animals. However, more accurate and feasible measures are in italics on the slide: measures of the events and environment (e.g. handling, housing), and measures from the animals themselves – their physiology and behaviour. Slide 18: The events and resources which give rise to sensory input are known as ‘welfare inputs’ or ‘resource-based measures’. The animal’s responses to this input are known as ‘welfare outputs’ or ‘outcome-based measures’. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 8 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes Slide 19: This slide illustrates this more clearly. Welfare inputs – the resources that are available to the animal – fall into three main categories: 1. Management/stockperson resources (e.g. how well trained the stockperson is; how much time he or she has to care for the animals). 2. Environment resources (e.g. the kind of housing; the quality and amount of the animals’ food; the use of vaccines, anthelmintics, etc.). 3. Animal resources (e.g. the animal’s genetic makeup and early experience, which affects disease resistance, fear thresholds, etc.). Welfare inputs are relatively easy to measure – especially stockperson and environment related ones. Because of this, some welfare assessments only look at inputs. However, you cannot know how an animal is experiencing his/her life if you do not also gather data directly about the animal. Consequently, welfare outputs – the animal-centred measures – must be part of the welfare assessment. There are three main categories of welfare output: 1. Measures of disease (e.g. lameness, coughing and other clinical signs) and of production (body weight; milk production). 2. Measures of behaviour (e.g. the amount of time a cow spends lying down, or the presence of stereotypic behaviour). 3. Measures of physiology (e.g. heart rate). As veterinary students, much of your training concerns the first group of measures: disease and production. We list them separately here, but they also overlap with the measures of behaviour and of physiology. We will look at three categories of welfare output in more detail in Modules 3, 6, 7 and 8. Slide 20: We shall now pull all this together by looking at how the Five Freedoms can direct us, broadly, to the most important welfare inputs and welfare outputs. The next few slides take you through examples of welfare inputs and outputs within each of the Five Freedoms. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 9 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes Slide 21: Note that, as they are written, these examples would not help you very much in doing an actual assessment because they are too vaguely worded. In Module 9, you will look at how the Five Freedoms have developed into a specific tool through the Welfare Quality® project. However, to close today’s lecture, let us look at how you could do a welfare assessment right now using the Five Freedoms to guide you. Slide 22: Because, at this point in your programme, you might not yet know the specifications for all the different welfare inputs (e.g. the right dimensions for feeders, or the correct number of drinkers, or the vaccines that a farmer should be using), you could just use your best judgement of welfare outputs. For each freedom, you would estimate: the percentage of animals affected (e.g. by hunger, thirst, fear, etc.) how badly they are affected (e.g. how many are moribund vs. how many have mild clinical signs vs. how many are healthy) how long that compromise has being going on for. Slide 23: This slide shows you how you would apply those principles in a flock of sheep, in the area of freedom from hunger. We noted much earlier that, while it is convenient to then provide an overall welfare score, it is difficult to do and may, in fact, not be desirable because it may not adequately reflect the animal’s experience in each area of concern. If you were doing the assessment in our example here, using the Five Freedoms, you could simply provide the numbers for each specific point. By doing so, the farmer would now have a benchmark against which to measure progress, and to compare his farm with other farms. Slide 24: In today’s lecture, we have covered some important background information that we will apply in other lectures. To sum up: You now know the theory of the Five Freedoms, and how they have influenced the development of assessment tools around the world. For example, we mentioned the Welfare Quality® project – which is academic and practical – and the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank which is economic, and the retailer Marks & Spencer, which is commercial. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 10 Module 2: Welfare Assessment and the Five Freedoms Lecture Notes You also know the limitations of using the freedoms as an assessment tool by themselves because they are anthropocentric, and they focus on the negative experiences rather than suggesting the promotion of positive experiences. They also do not account for any adaptation the individual animal may be able to make in response to a bad situation. You know too, however, that the freedoms can guide us in finding out more about what is important in an animal’s experience. In particular, you have seen that an animal’s experience has four main elements: sensory input to the brain, emotions, body responses and consequent adaptation through allostasis and homeostasis. You also know that the brain’s evaluation and the emotions that this generates are very important. Next, you know that, to assess the animal’s experience, the easiest things to measure are the welfare inputs; i.e. the resources that create the sensory input, which are the stockperson, the environment, and the animal (e.g. his/her genetics). Also easy to measure are welfare outputs – i.e. the body’s responses, which you can assess in terms of the number of animals showing a given response (e.g. body condition, fearful behaviour), how severe that response is, and how long that problem has been going on. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 11 Module 3 Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 1: This lecture was first developed for WSPA by Dr David Main (University of Bristol) in 2003. It was revised by WSPA scientific advisors in 2012 using updates provided by Dr Caroline Hewson. Slide 2: Today you will learn: how we know if performing a particular behaviour is important to an animal. As part of this, you will learn the basics of behaviour, i.e. the importance of understanding the natural behavioural repertoire the role of motivation in behaviour how emotions and genetics can influence the way the brain processes information and how this can affect behavioural responses. Then we will look at how to find out which behaviours are a priority for the animal, and will end by noting some examples of important behaviours in a variety of animals. Slide 3: We are interested in behavioural measures of welfare, because they can tell us something about an animal’s experience. To review: an animal’s experience may be broken down into the sequence shown on the slide. That is: the animal receives internal and external sensory input. the brain evaluates the input, which may generate emotions and the urge to perform a particular behaviour, as well as to exhibit physiological responses such as the stress response the responses should enable the animal to adapt and survive, and this information is stored by the brain, as shown by the arrow on the left. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 4: Module 6 will look at the different types of physiological response that animals may have to a particular sensory input. In short, most physiological responses are difficult to observe directly. Also, they are largely non-specific. For example, the stress response can occur when an animal experiences positive or negative sensory input. Therefore, measures of the stress response do not tell us if the animal is having a positive or negative experience. In contrast, behaviour represents a more complex level of functioning than physiological responses, because animals’ behaviours allow them to change and control their environment (e.g. run away, build a nest). Also, the behaviours an animal shows are relatively easy to observe. Therefore measures of behaviour should tell us something more specific about an animal’s experience than physiology alone can. Slide 5: When we consider behaviour as a measure of welfare, we remember that animals’ experience concerns three interrelated areas: physical (including functioning), mental (including feelings), and aspects of naturalness including the performance of behaviours that are important to the animal. So we can see that the performance of behaviours is one of the important elements of welfare. In addition, behaviours can reflect animals’ physical functioning and associated feelings. As vets, we are very aware of behaviour measures associated with physical functioning and feelings. We call those behavioural measures ‘clinical signs’, and we use them to diagnose disease (a physical functioning aspect of welfare), and to identify associated negative feelings such as pain and nausea. However, veterinary medicine has not traditionally concerned itself with behaviours in other regards. That is: when advising our clients, we have not traditionally talked about the third area of welfare, i.e. about whether their animals have opportunities to perform behaviours that are important to them our clinical work has not typically included behavioural measures of how animals feel when they are unable to perform behaviours that are important to them. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 2 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 6: Part of the reason for both these oversights in veterinary practice is that: animals may function very well even though they may be experiencing negative feelings as a result of being unable to perform important behaviours owners themselves are not aware of the broader behavioural aspects of welfare, so they do not typically consult vets about them. This is changing, however, as public concern for animals grows and research shows how important some of these behaviours are to animals, and that not being able to perform them can affect physical functioning and mental state. Slide 7: Other lectures in your degree programme will teach you how to use changes in behaviour to diagnose and treat disease and associated feelings such as pain, as illustrated in the upper two rings of this diagram. Today, we will focus on the bottom ring, and how the performance of behaviours that are important to the animal affects their welfare. Then, in Module 7, we will look at behavioural measures of welfare more broadly. Slide 8: If we want to know how important a behaviour is to an animal in human care, we first need to know what behaviours they are capable of performing. We therefore need to learn the full behavioural repertoire of the species. To do this, we need to observe the animal in the wild. For example, domestic chickens are descended from jungle fowl, so studies of jungle fowl in the wild can tell us about the potential behavioural range of hens and broilers. However, many domestic species no longer have relevant wild counterparts. In that case, we can put them in extensive, naturalistic conditions and study their behaviours there. When doing this, we need to observe many different types of behaviour. ‘Ethology’ is the scientific study of animal behaviour in the wild, and detailed discussion of the full behavioural repertoire of our different domestic species is beyond the scope of this lecture. However, briefly, there are several broad categories of behaviour. Within each category, each species has typical behavioural patterns which may be unique to that species and are often very complex. Examples of these categories of behaviour are: reproductive behaviour – this includes courtship behaviour, mating behaviour, parturient behaviour, and maternal behaviour Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 3 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes feeding behaviour – this includes behaviours directed towards seeking and obtaining food and behaviours involved in consuming food. For example, predators seek and obtain food by using their senses to detect prey, which they then chase and kill. The consumption of the dead prey may follow a particular pattern within the social group, e.g. the group leader feeds first, or the oldest animals are unable to compete and feed last. By making detailed behavioural observations over many days, we can establish the relative amounts of time that animals allocate to performing different behaviours within the categories. This is known as their time budget, and we can use this as a point of comparison for how animals allocate their time in captive conditions. Slide 9: A landmark study of the behavioural repertoire of domestic pigs was carried out in 1989 (Stolba & Wood-Gush, 1989), when domestic sows were introduced to a large woodland enclosure. These animals had been reared and lived in intensive conditions, as had generations of pigs before them, so they had not had experience of natural living. As adults, the sows had been confined in stalls, as shown in the photo. Studies of sows in such conditions have indicated that typically they tend to be still and show relatively few behaviours, and that some of them bite the bars of their stalls repetitively. However, in the 1989 study, when the sows were released into the woodland enclosure, they soon showed a wide range of behaviours and spent very little time doing nothing. For example, they rooted, moved through the woods, interacted with others, wallowed when the temperature was warm, and created nests with grass when they were about to give birth. They no longer showed the repetitive biting behaviour. This indicated that when the environmental cues were different, the sows had the urge to perform a range of behaviours. This provided impetus for research on whether close confinement might cause them to suffer because they were unable to perform those behaviours. Note that captive animals do not need to perform the full range of behaviours shown in the wild. That is, some of the behaviours are only necessary to enable the animal to survive in adverse conditions (e.g. escaping from a predator). In conditions of good husbandry, the animals should not need to perform those behaviours. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 4 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 10: Having observed our domestic species and established its full behavioural repertoire, we then need to establish which of all the possible behaviours animals choose to perform. Therefore, we are concerned with the strength of the animal’s motivation for performing the different behaviours. There is no universally agreed definition of motivation. However, a simple one is: the urge to perform a behaviour. This urge results from sensory input to the brain. As we saw earlier, sensory input can be internal or external. When the brain evaluates that sensory input, this can create an emotion and an associated urge to perform a particular behaviour. The result is a measurable behavioural response. Some behaviours are motivated largely by internal stimuli, others by external stimuli, and yet others by a combination of both. Slide 11: Behaviours that are mainly to do with preserving the animal’s physical state are generally the result of internal sensory cues – the behaviour is motivated by internal sensory input. Examples are the motivations to feed, drink, rest and groom. Animals need to perform these behaviours in any environment and research shows that, if animals are housed in such a way that they cannot eat, drink, rest, etc., the motivation to perform these behaviours increases until these life-sustaining behaviours can be performed. They must therefore be housed in such a way that they can satisfy these basic motivations. Note that some farming systems may not completely satisfy these basic motivations. So, although farm animals are fed, the food may not be delivered in a way that satisfies their species-typical feeding behaviour. For example, calves who are housed in groups and fed on milk from a bucket will sometimes suck each other; however, this occurs much less if calves consume their milk ration via free access to a teat – either the cow’s own teat or an artificial nipple drinker. This suggests that there is strong motivation for sucking behaviour in young calves, and that the ingestion of milk does not satisfy the urge to suck – only sucking can do that. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 5 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 12: Other behaviours are motivated by external sensory input, such as the sight of a predator causing flight, or the smell of food causing approach behaviour. Other behaviours are the response to both external and internal sensory input. This is true of many social behaviours. For example: an animal may commence play behaviour in response to the external sensory input of seeing another animal who has played with them in the past, and the internal cues that motivate play behaviour in their species however, if they see another animal who had not responded to their attempts at play, and may even have responded aggressively, the first animal will not commence in play behaviour, despite being motivated to play. Sometimes cues may give rise to conflicting motivations. For example: an animal may be thirsty and have the internal cue to go and drink from a known water source nearby. However, he or she may smell or see a predator nearby, or may know that the predator is often there. Therefore the urge to seek water and drink it may conflict with the urge to avoid the predator. Slide 13: As vets in practice, it is essential that we understand the motivation underlying animals’ behaviour so that, for example, we can tell if animals are fighting or playing. The study of applied animal behaviour is therefore very important because without that knowledge we may misjudge welfare in our patients. For example: when animals interact, we need to understand if they are playing or fighting. Playing is a measure of a positive emotional state and therefore of good welfare. Fighting can be a sign of poor welfare; if it is a repeated occurrence it may reflect unstable social groupings caused by factors such as uniformity of age within a group, and overcrowding another example is aggression in dogs. When a dog growls at a vet during examination in the clinic, the vet may interpret this as dominance aggression and may try to dominate the dog. However, because the vet is not a member of the dog’s social group and is not competing with the dog over the dog’s resources, dominance cannot be the dog’s motivation. Instead, the motivation is generally fear, which is very different from social dominance and requires a different solution. These two examples illustrate how, as clinicians, we need a full, scientific understanding of animal motivation and behaviour in order to correctly handle our patients and to accurately assess their welfare. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 6 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 14: As with physiological responses to sensory input, the brain is also central to behaviour. The brain is where emotions arise, in turn creating behavioural urge or motivation, all as a result of evaluation of sensory input. That evaluation is a consequence of the brain’s capacity to store information. It enables animals to learn, to anticipate negative or positive events, and to have expectations. The capacity of the brain to perceive, process and store information is called ‘cognition’. For example: a sheep’s brain stores information about where within a pasture he or she can find his/her preferred plants this ability to remember creates expectations about where to find the plants however, these expectations may in turn be modified by whether the sheep is dominant or subordinate so, when you see sheep grazing, the behaviour of the group reflects subtle and complex processes within each animal’s brain. Slide 15: There is growing evidence that an animal’s cognitive capacity is affected by his/her emotions. The influence of emotion on judgment and other cognitive processes such as memory is termed ‘cognitive bias’. Cognitive bias is a well recognised concept in human beings. Anecdotally, many of us may have found that when we feel sad we tend to be more pessimistic about future events than when we feel happy. Psychological research supports this: people who are in a negative emotional state tend to pay more attention to negative memories and to make more negative judgments about ambiguous stimuli than happier people. In this way our mood can tend to make us judge uncertain events positively or negatively. There are many neural similarities between human beings and many domestic animals, so the possibility of cognitive bias arises in animals too. For example, if animals are kept in conditions that induce mainly positive or mainly negative emotions, this may affect how their brains process new sensory information. In particular, animals who are already experiencing negative emotions, such as fear, may be more likely to interpret an ambiguous stimulus as a threat rather than a signal of something neutral or positive. Therefore their wider experience may be unnecessarily distressing. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 7 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 16: Research on the effect of emotion on cognition is now being conducted on animals. The most common area of research focuses on whether animals who are already in a negative emotional state are more likely to respond to ambiguous cues as if they predict a negative event (a ‘pessimistic’ response) than animals who are in a more positive state. There are many scientific challenges in designing appropriate tests of this hypothesis, and we do not yet have enough data to tell us how we might recognise cognitive bias in our veterinary patients. However, it is likely that this will become known during your professional lifetime. A practical example of some of the research to date concerns dogs in a shelter. 24 dogs from a shelter were exposed to a known test of separation anxiety. They were then exposed to a test in which they learned where they might find a bowl containing food, or an empty bowl. After that, they were exposed to ambiguous cues about whether they would find food or not. The authors concluded that dogs who showed higher levels of separation-related behaviour in the first test also showed pessimistic-like behaviour in regard to finding food. Because of their controlled study design and methods, the authors were able to conclude that this difference among dogs was due to cognitive bias, and not to other factors such as differences in motivation, learning ability, etc. Cognitive bias is a relatively new field of research. So far, the data support the idea that animals’ emotions can influence their behaviour because emotion influences how the brain processes information. Research continues to answer questions about how animals’ experiences affect their emotional state, so that we can better predict the effect of housing and husbandry on their feelings and, so, their welfare. Slide 17: While cognitive bias research looks at how animals’ emotions create different expectations about future events, earlier research has examined how emotions can be the motivations for behaviour in the present. This research indicates that negative emotions such as pain, fear and frustration typically motivate behaviours that meet an immediate need. This slide gives two examples. Slide 18: In contrast, positive emotions seem to motivate behaviours that are not needed urgently for survival in the present moment, but that bring a long-term benefit to the animals. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 8 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 19: We have now seen that emotions are closely linked to the urge to perform a behaviour. Emotions modify how animals process sensory input.We have just seen that emotions can give rise to behaviours that have short-term or long-term survival value. Just before that we learned about cognitive bias and how an animal’s current emotional state can affect how he or she processes new sensory input. There are other internal factors that can affect motivation in animals and therefore affect the behaviours we perceive. Genetics are very important here. Good stockpeople have used breeding to select lines of animals who show calmer behaviours. However, new scientific tools such as genetic mapping can give more specific information about the influence of genetics on behaviour, by quantifying differences in the genes themselves within a given part of the chromosome. Examples are given below. Hens and other poultry commonly peck the feathers and body of other birds in the group. This is thought be a form of redirected feeding behaviour, arising partly because the housing does not permit normal pecking in the search for food. Hens can be selected for a low tendency to feather-peck, and this is associated with higher levels of egg production and with measurable numeric differences in genes within a locus on the chromosome. Similarly, dairy cows with more docility in the milking parlour show quantifiable differences in genes from cows who are less docile. The genetic details of this do not concern us today. The point is only that research at the molecular level shows us that genes can strongly affect animals’ motivation to perform a particular behaviour in a particular context. Slide 20: In addition to emotional state and genetics, there are other internal and external factors that can affect motivation. These factors can interact in a complex way, which is why research into which behaviours are the most important for animals to perform can take many years. Some examples of the many other factors that affect the motivation and therefore expression of a behaviour include: the stress response – this can inhibit eating, defecation and urination. As vets, this means that when we hospitalise animals, they may not eat readily or eliminate readily availability of substrate – some behaviours are directed towards specific substrates. If the substrate is not present in the animal’s environment, the behaviour may not occur at all, or his/her motivation may be so strong that the animal will redirect the behaviour towards whatever other substrate they can find that suffices disease – when an animal is debilitated by disease, or feels unwell, the resulting feelings of weakness, pain, etc. may inhibit the performance of behaviours that might otherwise be important to the animal. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 9 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes Slide 21: To sum up what we have covered so far: We are examining how we can find out if performing a particular behaviour is important to animals. We have seen how you can establish an animal’s behavioural repertoire, and that all behaviours are the response to urges or motivations which are brought about in response to internal and external cues. We have also seen that the capacity of the brain to process and store information, known as cognition, can modify animals’ motivations and behaviours. We have also seen that cognition and resulting behaviour may be affected by factors such as animals’ pre-existing emotional state and their genetics. We shall now move on to measures of behavioural priority, and how these can tell us which behaviours are important for an animal. We shall conclude with examples of behaviours that are known to be priorities in different species. Slide 22: Behaviours that are important for animals to perform have a very strong motivation. The strength of motivation can be identified using a variety of research methods. We shall look at them very briefly here. First, you can measure how hard an animal will work for the opportunity to perform a particular behaviour. This methodology has shown that: when hens are ready to lay they will squeeze through narrow gaps, or push open heavily weighted doors, in order to gain access to a nesting area. Therefore nesting behaviour seems to be important for hens to perform when they are getting ready to lay in one test, heifers pressed a panel repeatedly in order to have the opportunity to rest for a total of 13 hours per day. They were not motivated to work for the opportunity to rest for longer than 13 hours. So, resting for 13 hours a day seems to be important to heifers. A second methodology concerns the fact that, in particular housing conditions, animals may develop behaviours that not typically seen under natural conditions. When this happens, it can indicate that an important motivation is not being satisfied. An example is cross-sucking between group-housed calves who are not fed from a teat. You do not see this in calves who are reared with their mothers, and providing access to the mother or to a nipple drinker largely eliminates the behaviour. Therefore, as noted earlier, sucking seems a very important behaviour to calves. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 10 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes In other situations, when an animal’s environment prevents him/her from performing a behaviour that is highly motivated, his/her behaviour may suggest frustration. For example, when hens are ready to lay but do not have access to a nesting site they pace when they have the room to do so. As veterinarians, we need to be aware that the housing of some of our animals may neither allow them to perform important species-typical behaviours nor to relieve their frustration at this by performing other behaviours. In the case of laying hens, traditional cages do not provide nesting areas and do not have the space to allow the hens to pace. Slide 23: There are other categories of behaviour that animals may show if their urge to perform an important behaviour is not met. Two important ones are: stereotypies, and redirected behaviours Stereotypies are repetitive behaviours that are relatively constant in form and serve no obvious purpose in the context in which they are performed. Stereotypies are thought to occur as a way for an animal to cope with being unable to perform an important behaviour; for example, sows biting the bars of their stalls. There are many other examples of stereotypies in confined animals, and we will come back to this in Module 7 when we discuss behavioural indicators of welfare more generally. Redirected behaviours are behaviours that are not abnormal in themselves, but that are directed towards an abnormal substrate. In our calves example, the sucking behaviour that they show towards other calves is performed normally; however, it is not normal to direct it towards other calves. Slide 24: We have looked at some of the important tools used by researchers to establish which behaviours are important for animals to perform. Such research has supported the idea that animals have “behavioural needs” (Widowski, 2010) and that depriving animals of the opportunity to perform these behaviours could cause suffering. Some academics disagree that “behavioural needs” is an appropriate or accurate term. However, the idea of animals having “behavioural needs” is useful to us as vets in practice. We shall conclude with some examples of behaviours that research has shown are important to different species. Some of them are now legally required for the species concerned in certain countries. For example: in EU countries, laying hens must have access to a nesting area and so cannot be kept in barren cages (Nicol, 2011) Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 11 Module 3: Behaviour and Animal Welfare Lecture Notes in EU countries, pigs must have access to rooting materials (Nicol, 2011) in Switzerland, hamsters used in research must have access to bedding that is at least 40 cm deep (Hauzenberger et al., 2006). Slide 25: In this lecture we have focused on the area of animal welfare shown in the bottom ring on the slide, aspects of naturalness. We have done this because, as vets, we may otherwise overlook this area of welfare in our clinical work, and focus only on the physical and the negative mental state that arises when animals are diseased. Today’s lecture has given you a brief overview of how we can understand behaviour in domestic animals, including the concept of motivation and the close relationship between behaviour, cognition and emotions. The lecture has also shown you how we know that performing certain behaviours is important for animals. We have also seen that the inability to perform the behaviours may give rise to negative feelings, especially frustration. Other modules which look at welfare problems in individual species will describe in more detail the behaviours and the consequences of frustrating them. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 12 Module 4 Introduction to Animal Welfare Ethics Lecture Notes Slide 1: This lecture was first developed for WSPA by Dr David Main (University of Bristol) in 2003. It was revised by WSPA scientific advisors in 2012 using updates provided by Dr Caroline Hewson. Slide 2: We will start by looking at what people mean when they talk about ‘ethics’ in everyday life and conversation. We will also address the common criticisms that ethics are ‘just subjective’ or ‘just preferences’. We will then focus on common ethical theories that have been applied to the question of how we ought to relate to animals. Slide 3: In Module 1 of this course, we noted that animal welfare concerns how sentient animals experience their lives in terms of their physical functioning, mental state/feelings and natural behaviours. To understand these three aspects requires science – hence animal welfare science. We also noted that animals’ experience of their lives is affected by our values – how we think we should treat animals, and what we think is important for them. Science helps us to understand some of these issues. Ethical theory, then, provides a logical framework by which to weigh up that knowledge with knowledge of other important factors such as the need to earn a living by farming, or to clear land and build houses. Using that framework, we can decide how we should treat animals. Today’s lecture introduces you to the most common theories about how we should treat animals so that you can begin to understand the underlying reasons why people may disagree about this issue. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 Module 4: Introduction to Animal Welfare Ethics Lecture Notes Slide 4: Before we investigate ethics and philosophy and how they relate to animals, we should review what is known about animal sentience. ‘Sentience’ is the capacity to have feelings and to experience suffering and pleasure. It implies a level of conscious awareness. Animal sentience is the fact that animals can feel pain and suffer but also experience many positive emotions, such as joy and pleasure. Animal sentience is recognised in legislation around the world (e.g. the Lisbon treaty). Studies have shown many animals can experience complex emotions which are often thought to be unique to humans, such as grief and empathy. The acceptance of animal sentience is based on decades of scientific evidence from the fields of neuroscience, behavioural sciences and cognitive ethology. Slide 5: When we think about ethics in everyday life we start by considering that many of the decisions we make all the time have moral dimensions. That is, they have components which extend beyond self-interest and involve concern for others. In particular, we are concerned that our actions may make others worse off – i.e. they may be harmed or deprived. Because of this concern we all have views about which actions are ‘right’ and which actions are ‘wrong’. These views are our ‘moral values’. Often the ethical part of everyday decisions remains hidden because it is part of a routine or forms part of widely accepted practice. However, when we examine our decisions and the moral values behind them, we find that our values are influenced by societal norms, professional ethics, personal ethics, and – if we have studied ethics – ethical theory. We will now discuss each of these in turn. Societal norms are a social ethic: they are rules that have emerged to enable us to live together. Social ethics may evolve and change as new factual information is gained or collective preferences develop in line with increasing or decreasing prosperity. For example, in many countries there is an emerging social consensus that animals need formal protection and consideration because they are sentient. This has led, in turn, to stunning becoming permissible at slaughter for halal meat in some countries, and forced moulting of hens being illegal in several countries. Next, as vets, our views of right and wrong in regard to animals may also be influenced by professional ethics. Those guidelines vary from country to country. They may evolve with social ethics, or they may be a response to it, or sometimes they lead it. For example, cosmetic surgeries in dogs and cats are permitted by some veterinary jurisdictions and are widely accepted within the social ethic too. In other countries, the social ethic may be Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 2 Module 4: Introduction to Animal Welfare Ethics Lecture Notes ambivalent on the subject, but the veterinary regulations are that performing those surgeries are grounds for censure and, possibly, losing your licence to practice. Our personal ethics also affect our views of what is right and wrong. Our personal ethics develop from our personal experiences. For example, you may visit a variety of dairy farming systems ranging from extensive farms with small herds, to large-scale, intensive production systems, causing you to have a personal preference for the more traditional, extensive system. These experiences and your associated feelings may result in a change in your behaviour – therefore, your personal ethics may lead you to vote for a change in farming methods. If you also subscribe to an ethical theory – about virtuous behaviour, for example – you might also buy dairy products from extensive, free-range farm systems (if they are available), even if they are more expensive, and regardless of whether that will have an impact on those dairy cows who remain in intensive systems. (Please note that this is only an example, not a suggestion. We will see in a moment that none of the ethical theories is absolute.) Slide 6: Our moral values may be informed by ethical theory – that is, ‘ethics’ in the academic sense. Ethics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the study of the logic behind our moral values – the reasons why we ought to relate to others in certain ways. Animal ethics is the study of how we ought to relate to animals. Some people are sceptical about the value of ethics. This is understandable, especially given what we have just seen about the complexity of moral values and given the variety of ethical theory. Two common criticisms that you may hear are: ethics is ‘just subjective’ ethics is ‘just preferences’. Those criticisms are not valid, however, as we shall now see. Slide 7: First, moral values and ethical theories are not simply an infinitely varied collection of subjective, private judgments. In reality, there is general agreement on objective reasons why certain actions are right and others wrong. Ethical consensus within any one society enables us to live harmoniously and thrive. If ethics was simply subjective, it would be likely to result in societal breakdown. The fact that many societies avoid that and can correct it when it does happen points to common reasoning and agreement about what is right and wrong. For example, the principle of the ‘golden rule’ (do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself) is found in most religions, most societies, and it is a component of some ethical theories. The rigorous logic of ethical frameworks also makes ethics more than ‘just subjective’. Concepts in Animal Welfare 3rd Edition © 2013 3 Module 4: Introduction to Animal Welfare Ethics Lecture Notes Slide 8: Personal ethics are different