Profile
Dr Michael T. Mendl is a professor of animal behaviour and welfare at Bristol Veter- inary School in the UK. He did his PhD at the University of Cambridge in behavioural development. In addition to teaching and supervising graduate students, Mendl cur- rently leads the BBSRC-UFAW Animal Welfare Research Network. He is also a member of the UKRI Future Leader Fellowships Panel College and sits on two grant panels.
“Finally, there is increasing interest in how animal welfare fits into the concept of sustainable agriculture, and how sustaina- bility-related changes can be implemented without imposing a welfare cost.”
What specific questions do you feel you have personally answered about animal welfare during your career? “I guess one contribution that Dr Liz Paul and I have made, with others, is to bring the study of animal emotion to the fore in ani- mal welfare science and to develop novel approaches to assessing animal affective states. We have focused on the measurement of changes in cognition and decision-making as proxy markers of affective state, in particular the idea that (cognitive) biases in decision-making may be closely related to whether the animal is in a positive or negative affective state and hence whether its welfare is relatively good or poor respectively. I’m not sure that we have answered questions in this area as opposed to raising new ones (!), but certainly progress has been made in developing approaches to assessing animal emotion.”
How has your research focus changed over time and, if so, why? “My research has shifted from an early focus on behavioural development, individual differences and social behaviour to a focus on cognitive and affective processes in animals, mainly due to the natural path that research interests take due to encounters with other scientists, moves to different institutes, the general zeitgeist and the development of new methods. “For example, we’re currently collaborating with psychologists and computational neuroscientists to use computational model-
ling methods to better understand the relationship between af- fective states and decision-making. However, I continue to retain an interest in individual differences in, for example, affective state, coping and resilience.”
What would you like to find out in the next five or ten years? “I’m interested in the concept of resilience, how an animal’s cognitive and affective style feeds into that, and how one might enhance resilience by capitalising on this knowledge. I’d also love to do work on animal consciousness – a hugely challenging area – as ultimately if we are concerned about animal welfare because we are concerned about how animals feel, then we need to be able to infer these feelings as accurately as possible, including in invertebrate taxa where there remains controversy over whether and what individuals may be able to experience.” What are your current thoughts about animal welfare for production animals? “I think that farm animal welfare needs to remain a high priority. There are still lots of problems to be addressed including, unfor- tunately, many that have been around for a long time: intensive housing of pigs (particularly growing and fattening pigs) and relat- ed problems like tail-biting and aggression between newly mixed sows; feather-pecking in laying hens; leg problems in broilers; lameness and mastitis in dairy cattle, among others.”
How do you see actual animal welfare meshing with sus- tainability concerns and other factors? “The drive for sustainability in agriculture is to be welcomed, but one way forward is to enhance efficiency. This might include
▶ PIG PROGRESS | Volume 38, No. 4, 2022 17
PHOTO: MICHAEL T. MENDL
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