Antimicrobial resistance is a major threat to both human and animal health, but reduction of use raises issues of how standards of animal health and welfare can be maintained without them. This turns the spotlight onto the role of good management and higher standards of animal welfare as drug-free ways of improving immune function and increasing resistance to infection. Research is urgently needed into the relationship between animal welfare, immunity, gut microbiota and disease and we are not yet in a position to claim that improving welfare will improve resistance to disease. ‘Boosting’ the immune system is not straightforward and an interdisciplinary approach is needed.

It is widely agreed that all animals are entitled to some degree of welfare consideration, but that some are entitled to more consideration than others. However, the basis for singling out some animals for special consideration often seems to be mostly a matter of degree of similarity to, or association with, humans. A more reasonable criterion would involve the extent of suffering caused by given events. Two variables that seem likely to be very important in the extent of suffering are the capacity to anticipate and the capacity to recall. Everyday experience tells us that human suffering can be hugely amplified by either anticipation or recall of painful or distressing events. In the past, psychologists have tended to take the view that both these processes depend on the possession of language, and were therefore irrelevant to species other than humans. But comparative psychologists are increasingly making use of concepts from human cognition, including both memory and anticipation, to explain animals’ responses to both past and future events. These processes are invoked to explain the behaviour of a wide range of vertebrate species. Recent work on primate cognition indicates that more elaborate forms of representation may be possible in the great apes. Such evidence should be used as the basis for deciding whether to give special welfare consideration to certain species which have special cognitive capacities — or indeed enhanced welfare consideration to a wider range of species, if their cognitive capacities are found to be more sophisticated than is generally assumed.

Global farmed finfish production increased from 9 to 56 million tonnes between 1990 and 2019. Although finfishes are now widely recognised as sentient beings, production is still being quantified as biomass rather than number of individuals (in contrast to farmed mammals and birds). Here, we estimate the global number of farmed finfishes slaughtered using FAO aquaculture production tonnages (1990–2019 data) and estimates of individual weight at killing (determined from internet searches at species and country level where possible). We relate these numbers to knowledge on humane slaughter, animal welfare law, and certification schemes. Since 1990, farmed finfish numbers killed annually for food have increased nine-fold, to 124 billion (1.24 × 1011, range 78–171 billion) in 2019. This figure does not represent the total number farmed (due to mortalities during rearing and non-food production) and is expected to increase as aquaculture expands. Our estimates indicate that farmed finfishes now outnumber the 80 billion farmed birds and mammals killed globally each year for food. The majority are produced in Asia. Inhumane slaughter practices cause suffering for most farmed finfishes. Most, 70–72%, have no legal welfare protection, and less than 1% have any fish-specific legal protection, at slaughter. The main global certification schemes in 2013–2015 accounted for 2% of slaughtered farmed finfishes. Fishes for which species-specific parameters for automated humane stunning are published comprise 20–24%. As the dominant taxa of farmed vertebrates, finfishes would benefit from better welfare if species-specific humane slaughter was defined and incorporated into laws and certification schemes.

The present study aims to assess the relationship between consumer perception and on-farm assessment of animal welfare performed using the Animal Needs Index 35L (ANI). Two tie-stall, 2 straw yard and 2 cubicle farms were scored by trained assessors using the ANI and filmed to produce six 3.5 min videos. Each of them contained 4 clips: barn overall view, feeding, milking and individual animals. Ten untrained observers were asked to elicit terms describing how they perceived the observed farming systems to affect animal welfare using Free Choice Profiling (FCP). Data from FCP were subjected to Generalised Procrustes Analysis (GPA). GPA showed a significant consensus among observers. Observers characterised the first dimension with terms ranging from constrictive to comfortable conditions and the second one in terms of cleanliness/dirtiness. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was conducted using the scores of the farms on the first two dimensions of GPA and the data gathered through the ANI. The first dimension of GPA (Comfortable), ANI's sheet 1 (Locomotion), sheet 2 (Social interaction) and sheet 6 (Total score) showed high loadings on the first component of PCA, whereas the second dimension of GPA (Clean), sheet 3 (Flooring) and sheet 4 (Stockmanship) were correlated with the second component of PCA. We concluded that FCP may be used to elicit lay person perception of welfare-related characteristics of dairy cattle farming systems, thus providing a tool to study the relationships between consumer perception and on-farm assessment of animal welfare.

Qualitative Behaviour Assessment of cattle expression using a fixed rating scale of 20 descriptors is one of the measures of the Welfare Quality® (WQ) assessment protocol for dairy cattle. As for other on-farm measures of welfare, reliability is an important issue especially if farms are to be certified. This study investigated the repeatability of QBA results across three different observation times during the day (early morning, late morning, early afternoon). For this purpose, 13 observers assessed a total of 30 video clips from ten commercial dairy farms using visual analogue scales to score the 20 QBA terms. QBA scores for ‘emotional state’ were computed according to the Welfare Quality® protocol (WQ_QBA) and, additionally, a Principal Component Analysis was carried out. The latter revealed two main dimensions which may be described as ‘mood’ and ‘activity’, the former thus corresponding to the ‘emotional state’ score of the WQ protocol. Both for scores derived from the WQ protocol and from PCA, mixed model analysis for repeated measures revealed a significant effect of observation time depending on the farm. Mixed model analysis for repeated measures revealed a significant effect of observation time for three farms out of ten on both the WQ_QBA score and the PCA ‘mood’ dimension; a similar effect was found for eight out of ten farms for the PCA ‘activity’ dimension. These results indicate that observation time potentially affects WQ (and other QBA) outcomes on a proportion of farms. However, given that outcomes for WQ_QBA and PCA ‘mood’ were consistent for the majority of farms, procedures suggested in the Welfare Quality® protocol may constitute a reasonable compromise between reliability and feasibility. If the QBA assessment should reflect the ‘mean mood’, multiple assessments throughout the day may be carried out.

We report on the efficacy of body weight change as a measure of trapping and handling stress in two species of wild small mammal: bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus) and wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus). We tested two hypotheses: (1) that weight change after capture and handling is related to the intensity of the trapping and handling regime, and (2) that weight change after an intensive handling regime is related to an individual's current pattern of energy expenditure. Trapped wood mice that were subjected to intensive handling (intensive stressor) lost more weight than did animals that were handled minimally (less intensive stressor), but this was not the case for bank voles. Patterns and factors related to body weight change in response to intensive handling also differed between the two species: heavier and non-breeding bank voles were more likely to lose weight, but this was not true for wood mice, and none of the factors we measured was found to affect weight loss in this species. Our results were broadly consistent with the predictions of the biological cost hypothesis. We discuss the limitations and benefits of weight loss as a measure of stress.

A welfare assessment was conducted during 475 observations of 75 long-line tethered horses and 587 observations of 112 freerange horses kept on public grazing land in South Wales over a six-month period from March to August 2010. The observations included quantitative and qualitative behavioural assessments, assessments of physical welfare and assessments of the environment of the horse. Multi-level modelling was used to identify the significant factors affecting each measure. Tethered horses had similar behavioural repertoires to free-range horses but there were differences related to tethering, such as fewer observations of walking, trotting and cantering, increased vocalisations occurring during the observation and poorer qualitative ‘mood’ scores. There were few observations of severe physical welfare problems in either tethered or free-range horses, however tethered horses were observed more often to have eye abnormalities, hoof cracks, lameness and signs of limb pain but less often with mane and tail tangles, as thin or as dirty. Shelter from wind, rain or sun was available to almost all free-range horses (99.8% of observations) but was only found during 16.5% or fewer observations of tethered horses, giving them a greater risk of poor welfare during inclement weather. Similarly, tethered horses were infrequently observed to have access to clean water, and their willingness to drink when offered water, suggests the provision of water was inadequate and tethered horses may have been thirsty. There were significant confounding effects of the observer or climatic factors for some behavioural and physical measures that should be considered when conducting future studies.

The widespread use of transgenic animals in research, and especially for generating models of human disease, has given rise to calls for a careful documentation of transgenic strains with particular emphasis on characterizing phenotypes and their animal welfare aspects. Based upon several published suggestions for general health monitoring of laboratory animals and upon a questionnaire we developed for the characterization of transgenic strains, score sheets for litter-wise and individual data collection were tested in a pilot study. The documentation concept and some of the most important parameters are presented and discussed with respect to their feasibility and usefulness. The use of score sheets can help in determining the application of humane end points at the individual level, phenotype characterization and assessment of animal welfare for the whole strain, and the development of better breeding strategies - apart from being of direct scientific interest. We suggest that these score sheets, available via the Internet at: www.bzl.unizh.ch/de/database/formtransg/index2.html, should be applied for routine and comprehensive phenotype characterizations of transgenic mouse strains used and kept for animal experimentation.

The ability of dairy cows to discriminate between floors with a smooth epoxy resin surface or with surface-applied bauxite aggregates of mean diameters 0.5 mm, 1.2 mm or 2.5 mm (having coefficients of static friction of 0.35, 0.42, 0.49 and 0.74, respectively) was recorded when they were offered the opportunity to walk down paired floor surfaces to receive a food reward. Following training, one half of the cows were rewarded when they selected the floor with the greater friction and the other half were rewarded when they selected the floor with the least friction. The cows were able to distinguish between the different floor surfaces — even between surfaces with 0.5 mm and 1.2 mm aggregates, which humans found difficult to distinguish. Eight similar cows were then offered a choice of walking down passageways of paired floors with an equal reward at the end of each passageway. There were no consistent preferences for floor type, and when the reward was offered only on the side least favoured by each cow in the initial test, the random pattern of selection was still evident. A final choice test offered the cows the opportunity to traverse passageways of either wet concrete or concrete covered with excreta. All cows avoided the passageway with excreta completely, even when the reward was increased in this passageway and removed from the wet concrete passageway. This avoidance was attributed to the cows’ lack of contact with slurry, as they were at pasture for most of the day, in contrast to the cows used in previous work, which were housed in buildings with passageways covered in excreta and showed little avoidance behaviour of such passageways.

In animal care, when current decisions are made to maximise long-term quality of life (QoL), a key necessity is being able to make accurate predictions about how current choices will affect the animal's future QoL. However, in the procession of any individual's life, many factors that influence QoL change — some are foreseeable, many are not. Moreover, QoL has no fixed anchor points; it is dynamic, mutable, with a shifting frame of reference over time. In addition to actual changes in QoL over time, numerous factors have been identified that influence one's ability to adopt the mindset of the individual at a later point in time — for one's self as well as that of others. It has been shown that in people, across a wide range of health conditions, individuals with illness or disability typically report greater happiness and QoL than do healthy people envisioning themselves in similar circumstances (‘the disability paradox‘). Difficulties in QoL outcome prediction fall into two categories: (1) predictions made with the wrong mindset, in which there is a mismatch between the mindset of the assessor/predictor and that of the assessee/experiencer; and (2) predictions made on the basis of unforeseen or incorrectly estimated psychological changes in the assessee/experiencer.

The full extent to which inherited disorders occur in different breeds of domestic horse (Equus caballus) has not been previously been investigated. A systematic search was carried out to review scientific literature on inherited disorders in domestic horse breeds and examine patterns in potentially inherited disorders. A two-part search was conducted: (i) electronic bibliographic databases for published studies; and (ii) existing online databases of inherited disorders in animals. A total of 230 papers were identified, discussing 102 inherited disorders in the horse. Few cases (17) were found in which disorders were reported to have a direct link to a conformational or phenotypic trait. Forty-nine breeds of domestic horse were described as being predisposed to one or more inherited disorders, but such predispositions did not distinguish between genetic or environmental causes. There were few patterns in the number of disorders to which breeds were reportedly predisposed or in the extent to which disorders were researched. The structure and grouping of disorders presented here could assist with standardisation in the terminology used for describing inherited disorders.

In the European Union, at least 1% of farms are inspected every year and sanctions are applied to those that do not comply with the legislation on animal welfare. These on-farm inspections can result in measures to correct welfare problems detected. They can also highlight major risks that will require a focus of efforts and help prevent further non-compliances. Here, we analysed the reports from inspections of French cattle farms between 2010 and 2013 to check whether inspection stimulates improvement and to propose ways to improve how animal welfare legislation is implemented through the cross-compliance system. French inspectors use 32 items to assess overall compliance of farms inspected. We found that compliance improves on farms that are re-inspected but not in other farms (8% of severely non-compliant farms). Nine items do not influence the overall assessment whereas eight have a huge impact. The importance attributed to items varies from the first to the second visit to a farm. The major risks are absence of farm records, lack of basic care (practices or enclosures likely to harm animals, insufficient feeding) and inadequate skills (no veterinarian consulted, insufficient qualified staff). To improve compliance with EU animal welfare legislation and the efficiency of the inspection system, we suggest organising consultation between inspectors, ministry central services and welfare experts to: (i) refine the checklist and harmonise interpretations of item compliance; (ii) make sure all farmers are aware of the legislative requirements and the major risks of non-compliance; and (iii) define plans for a step-wise improvement of non-compliant farms.

When thwarted in a behaviour, laying hens show an increase in stereotyped pacing, displacement preening and a specific vocalisation known as the ‘gakel-call’. How these behaviours, which might serve as indicators of welfare, are influenced by social factors is not yet known. In this study, we investigated the effect of an audience (another bird or a human) on the expression of the gakel-call and other behaviours indicating frustration. Twenty-four Lohman Brown hens were trained to gain free access to food in a test cage. Sixteen hens were used as test birds and eight as non-test audience birds. The food-deprived test hens were tested for 15 min in a non-thwarting situation (food freely available) and for 15 min in a thwarting situation (food covered but visible). For both situations we investigated four different treatments: no audience in the adjacent cage; a non-thwarted audience bird in the adjacent cage; a thwarted audience bird in the adjacent cage; and finally a human audience. The durations of stereotyped pacing and displacement preening were significantly higher in test birds during thwarting than during non-thwarting; thwarted birds also gave significantly more gakel-calls compared to non-thwarted birds. The test birds, and also the audience birds, gave more gakel-calls when thwarted in the presence of a thwarted conspecific than when in the presence of a non-thwarted bird, but there were no significant differences in stereotyped pacing or displacement preening, which are usually associated with frustration. In conclusion, this study supports the view that the gakel-call signals frustration in laying hens. Furthermore, the state of the audience influences the occurrence of gakel-calls in thwarted hens. Thus, when using the gakel-call as a welfare-indicator, the social aspects of the vocal expression of frustration in laying hens should not be overlooked.

Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot tell us that we live in a plural world in which actions are justified in multiple ways. Moreover, Anne Marie Mol argues that things, certainly including animals, are always multiple, their very existence dependent on the particular practices in which they are implicated. Thus, animal welfare policies must be understood in light of both the ways in which animals are ‘practiced’ and the particular justifications provided for these practices. Such policies make claims based on the practices involved in animal-human interactions and are justified based on appeals to the scientific (industrial), civic, market, and domestic worlds, among others. Thus, animal welfare policies must necessarily involve compromises among both the multiple ways in which animals are ‘practiced’ and the multiple ways in which those policies may be justified.

Animals under human management are often separated from conspecifics, which may lead to behaviour indicative of separation distress or grief. For the purposes of this paper, grief is considered as a biological response to separation, indicated by a bi-phasic ‘protest-despair’ behavioural response. It is reasonable to assume that only animals which are able to form complex social bonds can experience grief. Scientific experiments have suggested that some farm and laboratory animals experience distress or grief as a result of maternal separation and social isolation. However, little is known about whether the public believe that animals are capable of grief. Therefore, we surveyed 1,000 members of the public to establish what knowledge they have about grief in animals and to compare this to what we know in science. The survey revealed that 90% of the general public believed that some or all animals can experience grief, with 23% believing that all animals can grieve. They attributed grief more to companion animals and animals with higher level cognitive abilities than to farm animals and animals that may be feared. It is concluded that public belief about grief in animals extends beyond scientific evidence, and that educating people about scientific findings and management practices connected with grief and separation distress may improve the welfare of farm and laboratory animals.

Substrates and objects are provided to farm animals on the assumption that they improve animal welfare by enriching the environment, but these often fail to consider the extent to which an environmental enrichment (EE) improves animal welfare, if at all. Furthermore, there are numerous definitions of EE, each with a unique expectation. If expectations of animal welfare improvement are set too high, industry uptake may be thwarted, but if thresholds are set too low it will not result in meaningful improvements to animal welfare. We propose an EE framework based on revised definitions of EE that reflect improvements to various components of animal welfare: (i) pseudo-enrichment; (ii) EE for meeting basic needs; (iii) EE for pleasure; and (iv) EE for positive welfare balance. This framework requires short- and long-term assessments to determine the impact of the EE, although many are lacking in the production animal literature. Redefining EE with a focus on specific animal welfare outcomes will assist producers in identifying the optimal EE for their enterprise. Subsequently, we encourage dialogue between farmers, researchers and industry stakeholders when designing environmental enrichment programmes. This framework is a science-based tool that can be used to inform the development of clear EE assessment protocols and requirements for animal welfare legislation, assurance programmes and industry. This evidence-based framework ensures that the focus is on the outcome of EE programmes rather than the intent. Importantly, this framework has the flexibility to adapt even as baseline environments evolve, ensuring the continual improvement to production animal welfare.

The quality of human-animal relationships in the livestock industries has been increasingly recognised as an important determinant of animal welfare. Attitudes and empathy are multi-dimensional traits that may be associated with the stockpersons’ behaviour. The aim of this study was to determine the dimensionality of the goat-oriented attitudes and empathy of stockpeople in the Norwegian dairy goat industry. We also explored how empathic and attitudinal dimensions are interrelated, and how the demographic background variables may predict empathy and attitudes. A total of 260 dairy goat farmers participated in the study, by the means of either postal or internet-based questionnaire formats. Multi-item rating scales were developed specifically for the assessment of attitudes and empathy towards goats, and Principal Component Factor Analysis was conducted to determine the dimensionality of the farmers’ goat-oriented attitudes and empathy. Subsequently, linear and ordinal regression analyses were performed to explore the interrelationships. The analyses revealed dimensions of empathy that can be recognised from studies of human-oriented empathy, and attitude dimensions that can be interpreted similarly as dimensions described in studies from other livestock industries. Our results show that different dimensions of attitudes and empathy were associated with different demographic variables, and that each empathy dimension was associated with a different attitude factor.

Field-based animal researchers need to balance the potential adverse effects of their research activities against the benefits of research outcomes, but the data required to do this are often lacking. Assessing, and subsequently reporting the effects of researcher activities on wild animal populations can be difficult, so that studies to detect these effects sometimes lack rigour or fail to encompass sufficient time to ensure that the effects are tested under a range of environmental stresses. We monitored the effect of investigators working in colonies of two seabirds, the short-tailed shearwater (Puffinus tenuirostris) and the little penguin (Eudyptula minor). Disturbance of breeding birds while checking nests or the weighing of chicks to monitor growth are very common activities for demographic and ecological studies, but how these activities may influence the birds is rarely measured. We investigated differing levels of disturbance during both activities between 2002-03 and 2008-09 to assess their effect on egg laying, chick survival and growth rate and observed no effect for nest checking or handling of short-tailed shearwaters and indeterminate effects for handling in little penguins. Over a period of several years the study has observed a large-scale decline in the number of breeding shearwaters and includes years when control nests had above and below average breeding success.

Attitudes to animals have been extensively studied for people in developed countries, but not for those in developing countries. The attitudes of prospective stakeholders in the livestock sectors in south-east and east Asia toward transport and slaughter were examined by surveying university students studying veterinary medicine and animal science in Malaysia, Thailand, China and Vietnam, with a total of 739 students taking part. Students had greater acceptability of transport than slaughter issues for livestock, and female students found most transport and slaughter issues of greater concern than male students. Veterinary students were more accepting of several issues than animal science students, in particular killing animals that were injured or ill. Religion had a major effect on attitudes. Muslim students found using animals that died naturally for products least acceptable. Compared to them, Hindu students were less accepting of killing injured or ill animals and Buddhist students less accepting of euthanasing healthy pets. Students with more experience of pets were less accepting of both transport and slaughter issues. It is concluded that concern was exhibited by future stakeholders in the SE and E Asian livestock industries for slaughter and, to a lesser extent, transport issues, although attitudes were influenced by their religion, gender and experience of pet-keeping.

At present, animal experimentation remains central to our understanding of human disease-related processes and of the biological effects of many substances. Traditional experiments have relied heavily on invasive techniques to monitor changes in blood biochemistry, tissue structure or function, or to phenotype or genotype genetically modified animals. In some cases, a proportion or all of the animals used during the course of a study may be sacrificed for histopathological assessment. In most cases, this is to track the progression or regression of a disease over time, or to determine the levels of toxicity evident in specific organs or tissues. However, many of these techniques fail to provide details of how a disease develops or how a substance elicits its effects. In recent years there has been a gradual increase in the application of imaging techniques that were originally developed and used in fundamental research or in medicine. These non-invasive techniques allow diseases, and responses to exogenous substances, to be monitored in a temporal and spatial manner, therefore allowing a greater amount of information to be derived from smaller numbers of animals, which in turn, increases the statistical validity of the data by reducing the level of experimental variation. Non-invasive imaging also allows more informative and humane endpoints to be used and, perhaps most importantly, allows functional details to be studied in the context of a living animal. Some of the recent developments within the field of non-invasive imaging and their significance with respect to animal welfare and the understanding of human physiology are discussed.