A Perspective on Strategic Enrichment for Brain Development: Is This the Key to Animal Happiness?

The concept of positive welfare is an expansion of the traditional understanding that animal welfare is defined by minimizing stress, pain, suffering, and disease. Positive welfare shifts the animal welfare narrative from a focus on reducing negative experiences to proactively providing animals with opportunities to have positive experiences and feelings. The concept, although around for several decades, is in its infancy in terms of developing ways of assessing positive welfare on farms, especially in extensive systems, and there are challenges in the adoption of positive welfare practices and the monitoring of continuous improvement at the farm level. Using an iterative approach, this critical review aims to explore the extent to which positive welfare interventions and indicators are positioned and have been developed within the animal welfare literature for sheep. This paper critiques existing positive welfare indicators, such as choices in food and the physical environment, conspecific social synchronization, maternal bonds, intergenerational knowledge transfer, positive human–animal relationships, etc., as currently assessed by the ‘good life framework’. It also reviews the characteristics of scientific measures for (positive) affective states in the current sheep literature and their potential contribution to understanding positive welfare states in sheep. In conclusion, this paper provides recommendations for future research regarding sheep welfare.

Section: Results and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Positive Aspects of Welfare in Sheep: Current Debates and Future Opportunities

Muhammad

Stokes

Manning

2022

“…The fourth domain was behavioural interactions, with three provisions. With the environmental interactions provision, we looked into if the animals are required to be provided with any enrichment in the environment [64][65][66], if their living areas are to be appropriately structured (e.g., in the case of goats, if they are provided with climbing possibilities [67,68]), and if there are any measures in place for improving comfort behaviour (e.g., scratch posts [69]). The social interactions provision investigated whether the animals are required to be kept in stable groups [70], if the young are allowed to be separated from their mothers [71,72], and if play behaviour is promoted in any way (e.g., keeping of animals in age-appropriate groups) [73].…”

Section: Defining the Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Animal Welfare Risk in Fibre-Producing Animals by Applying the Five Domains Framework

Salobir,

Kirchner,

Haager

2023

Nearly 5 billion farm animals, including waterfowl, cattle, sheep, goats, and alpacas, are being affected by the fashion industry. There is an urgent need for a system that evaluates their welfare. The rise in public interest on the topic of animal welfare is leading to the creation of different textile standards or certification schemes, which can give us an overview of the general state of expectations in terms of animal welfare within the textile industry. We therefore created a risk assessment tool and applied it to 17 different textile standards. Our results showed that only one of the standards reached a score in the “Acceptable” animal welfare risk category, and the rest of the standards had even lower scores of risks for animal welfare. In general, industry standards have not demanded sufficient requirements for higher levels of animal welfare. While the current risk assessment gave us a good idea of what is considered acceptable within the industry, it is also not necessarily representative of the risks for the majority of farm animals that are part of the textile industry. Only a small number of animal-derived materials are certified with some form of animal welfare standards, even though these standards can play an important role in improving the standard of care for animals. To evaluate the actual welfare states of the animals in fibre production, further research is needed to apply the proposed tool to actual farms.

“…Humans’ strong demand for animal products and widely held beliefs about the justifiability of meat consumption [ 10 ] makes complete independence from food of animal origin in the near future, unlikely. However, even in the short term, there is room for improvement in the sustainability of animal agriculture to preserve the environment, protect biodiversity, and feed the world’s growing population, while also working towards a more ethical treatment of farm animals, for example, by decreasing negative and promoting positive affective experiences in farm animals [ 11 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptions of Farm Animal Sentience and Suffering: Evidence from the BRIC Countries and the United States

Mata

Jaeger

Domingues

2022

In this study, we examined how beliefs about farm animal sentience and their suffering vary across culture and demographic characteristics. A total of N = 5027) questionnaires were administered in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and the USA. Brazilians showed higher and Chinese lower levels of perceived animal sentience. In Russia and India, the perception of suffering and sentience increases with age, with similar levels to those observed in the USA. In all the countries, more people agreed than disagreed that animals are sentient. Men in India show higher levels of agreement with the relation between eating meat and animal suffering, followed by women in Brazil and China. Lower levels of agreement are observed in Americans and Chinese. Women show higher levels of compassion than men. In Russia, there is a slightly higher level of agreement between men and in the USA younger men agree more. Young American men show higher levels of agreement, while in India and China age has the opposite effect. For fair trading competition, it is important to standardize procedures and respect the demand for both animal protein and its ethical production. Overall, our results showed that perceptions of farm animal sentience and suffering vary substantially across countries and demographic groups. These differences could have important consequences for the perceived ethicality of meat production and consumption, and for global trade in animal products.