animal welfare A life worth living?
Although few of us have direct contact with the animals we eat, the question of whether that animal had a good life is increasingly discussed.
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AND IT’S A QUESTION that those working with the Animal Welfare and Behaviour Group are working to answer with techniques developed to assess an animal’s emotional state. Many see this type of work as important from an ethical point of view, but results can also inform legislation in areas such as living conditions on the farm and live transportation. Tree members of the Animal Welfare and Behaviour Group, which is part of the University’s Veterinary School, outline some of their work into assessing animal welfare.
HOW DO YOU ASSESS AN ANIMAL’S EMOTIONAL STATE, AND IS IT A DIFFICULT PROCESS?
Professor Mike Mendl: “It’s very challenging. One new approach that we’re developing is to train them that one cue, for example a tone of a specific pitch,
predicts something nice such as food, and another cue, a different tone, predicts something less nice such as no food, or a noise. We then ask them – by presenting intermediate tones – ‘What do these ambiguous cues predict?’ We predict that animals in a positive emotional state, like happy humans, will tend to judge an ambiguous event as being positive, and animals in a negative state with poor welfare tend to judge it negatively. “Tis appears to be the case in a number
of different species including rats, dogs, sheep and starlings, suggesting that this method may be a useful new way of assessing animal emotions and welfare. However, we can’t be sure that animals really feel emotional states in the ways that we might, because we don’t yet have ways of directly assessing what they are capable of consciously experiencing.”
HOW DOES AN ANIMAL’S RESPONSE TO TESTING HELP WITH RESEARCH?
Professor Christine Nicol: “Another approach actually ‘asks’ animals whether they want to be in a cage or not. Obviously you can’t ask them with a questionnaire, but you
can give them choices and see how hard they work for particular things. Te classic approach is to put the price up gradually. So you might find that a chicken in a cage is willing to ‘pay’ for more space by putting more effort into pecking a button that makes the cage bigger. “With animals you assume that what
they want matches what they need, so assessing how hard they are prepared to pay for something tells you how much they need it. Tis kind of work has contributed to the ban on the conventional battery cage, which came into law at the beginning of 2012. Chickens will work very, very hard for a bit more space and also a nest.”
HOW ARE ON-FARM STANDARDS CHECKED?
Dr David Main: “Assurance schemes, such as the Red Tractor mark
you see on some foods, offer an assurance to the public on the standards of welfare of animals during their life. Tere is a system of inspecting farms to make sure standards are being adhered to, but the industry has realised that the system could be better at assessing welfare on farms. “Te industry wants to provide assurance
to the customer that animals reared on UK farms are happy and healthy. Tey have therefore asked us to develop ideas of how this can be better assessed in order to improve the assurance given to the consumer. Tis work has been funded by charities or a levy that farmers, growers and processors pay. Tis is an excellent example of taking the research we do and applying it in a very practical sense.”
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bristol.ac.uk
Photos: Getty, Thinkstock
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