Scientific and technical assistance on welfare aspects related to housing and health of cats and dogs in commercial breeding establishments

Abstract

This Scientific Report addresses a mandate from the European Commission according to Article 31 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 on the welfare of cats and dogs in commercial breeding establishments kept for sport, hunting and companion purposes. The aim was to scrutinise recent recommendations made by the EU Platform on Animal Welfare Voluntary Initiative on measures to assist the preparation of policy options for the legal framework of commercial breeding of cats and dogs. Specifically, the main question addressed was if there is scientific evidence to support the measures for protection of cats and dogs in commercial breeding related to housing, health considerations and painful procedures. Three judgements were carried out based on scientific literature reviews and, where possible a review of national regulations. The first judgement addressed housing and included: type of accommodation, outdoor access, exercise, social behaviour, housing temperature and light requirements. The second judgement addressed health and included: age at first and last breeding, and breeding frequency. Judgement 3 addressed painful procedures (mutilations or convenience surgeries) and included: ear cropping, tail docking and vocal cord resections in dogs and declawing in cats. For each of these judgements, considerations were provided indicating where scientific literature is available to support recommendations on providing or avoiding specific housing, health or painful surgical interventions. Areas where evidence is lacking are indicated.

Cats’ and dogs’ welfare: text mining and topics modeling analysis of the scientific literature

“…This could be firstly because selective breeding has become a welfare concern only recently, leading to the ban of the breeding of specific brachycephalic breeds in North European countries. Secondly, because commercial breeding of cats and dogs has been under-regulated worldwide, with a very limited number of studies focusing on the welfare of cats and dogs used for breeding ( 30 ). The topic “Welfare and pain assessment” did not contain many records (only 166); however, a higher number of studies was recently published probably due to the fact that the need to objectively measure welfare and pain is quite recent in the literature.…”

“…The first pain scale based on facial expression in cats was also published only in 2019 ( 79 ). The need for more studies aiming at identifying thresholds and aggregation methods to carry out risk analysis in animal welfare was pointed out by the European Food Safety Agency-EFSA ( 30 ).…”

“…The need for mandatory legislation to establish common policies and address inadequate legal systems must therefore be undertaken immediately ( 29 ). Fortunately, new regulations to protect companion animals’ welfare will be issued shortly in Europe ( 30 ) but there is a need for research-based evidence. Starting from these considerations, this review aimed to examine in detail this research field by using text mining and topic analysis techniques.…”