A majority of laying hens fracture their keel bones during the laying cycle. It is not easy for a farmer to identify hens with fractures and hen survival rate seems high. Thus, the effect of both recent and healed fractures on bird welfare is unclear. We aimed to investigate the impact of these keel-bone fractures on hens’ production and behaviour. The egg production, mobility and behaviour of Lohmann Brown hens without keel fractures were compared with that of hens with old healed fractures of varying severity. In addition, the keel-bone strength and body temperature around the fracture site was measured for each group. Hens with no fractures laid more eggs and had a higher egg-quality score (derived from measures of egg weight, egg surface area, shell weight, shell percentage and shell density). These hens had the highest keel area temperature, strongest keel bones, accessed perches more frequently and took a shorter time to negotiate a walkway obstacle test and to fly down from a raised perch. Hens without keel fractures were better in all investigated parameters than hens with keel fractures, indicating a detrimental effect of fractures on both welfare and economic return.

The welfare of animals in transit may be affected by driving events, such as acceleration, braking and cornering. The relationships between driving events and the behavioural responses of the animals were examined. A single-deck, non-articulated vehicle was fitted with a video-recording system, GPS and tri-axial accelerometer. Two drivers each drove three standard journeys (two 3-h stages on different types of roads) for each animal type. Six different groups of five cattle (Bos taurus), ten calves and ten pigs (Sus scrofa) were each transported on separate journeys. Cattle stood still for most of each journey. Calves spent more time lying down during the second stage of the journey than during the first. Although pigs spent some of the time lying down, they spent more time sitting down and this time was greatest on a motorway and during the second stage of the journey. Frequent adjustments to maintain stability were required in response to acceleration, braking, cornering and rough road surfaces. Some animals experienced repeated falls. Falls occurred after a series of different types of events. The fewest losses of balance occurred on the motorway. As a motorway is a limited access multi-lane carriageway not crossed on the same level by other traffic lanes, the driver does not normally undertake frequent vehicular adjustments to respond to road features. Therefore, motorways give animals an opportunity to rest and avoid discomfort from repetitive driving events. If drivers anticipate potential driving events and prepare for them, it will reduce the likelihood and severity of losses of stability.

This paper describes the implementation and simultaneous promotion of an action plan designed to ensure animal welfare standards on-farm that exceed the requirements for acceptability in law. The approach is based on two action cycles, the producer and retailer cycles, The producer cycle, involving welfare audit and the implementation of an action plan for welfare has four stages: self-assessment; independent audit; creation of an action plan based on identification of principal hazards and critical control points; review; and revision of the action plan depending upon assessment of outcomes. The retailer cycle is designed to set quality standards for animal welfare, demonstrate compliance, promote proven high welfare products and reward producers. The paper reviews some incentives and constraints to action for both farmers and retailers and presents encouraging examples of the extent to which both producers and retailers have responded to increased public demand for high welfare products.

An ever-expanding scientific literature highlights the impact of the prenatal environment on many areas of biology. Across all major farmed species, experimental studies have clearly shown that prenatal experiences can have a substantial impact on outcomes relevant to later health, welfare and productivity. In particular, stress or sub-optimal nutrition experienced by the mother during pregnancy has been shown to have wide-ranging and important effects on how her offspring cope with their social, physical and infectious environment. Variation in the conditions for development provided by the reproductive tract or egg, for instance by altered nutritional supply or hormonal exposure, may therefore explain a large degree of variation in many welfare- and productivity-relevant traits. The scientific literature suggests a number of management practices for pre-birth/hatch individuals that could compromise their later welfare. Such studies may have relevance for the welfare of animals under human care, depending on the extent to which real life conditions involve exposure to these practices. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of extending the focus on animal welfare to include the prenatal period, an aspect which until recently has been largely neglected.

The adoption of slaughter and pre-slaughter techniques to improve animal welfare and meat quality and safety is dependent on providing appropriate information, application and enforcement as well as information ownership by local people. The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) and Beijing Chaoyang Anhua Animal Product Safety Research Institute (APSRI) have been running a humane slaughter programme in China for more than three years. The aim of the programme is to improve the welfare of animals slaughtered in China through a three-pronged approach: i) train core-plant mid-level managers to be humane slaughter trainers; ii) provide guidance on legislation and codes of practice; and iii) develop and implement pre-slaughter and slaughter animal welfare curricula for undergraduate veterinarians. The production of in-country training material is based on a training-needs analysis conducted prior to the programme. Four Chinese trainers have completed the training and become national level trainers. In the last three years they have trained more than 5,000 staff from 800 slaughterhouses. Technical standards for slaughtering pigs, based on those of the OIE, have been adopted in China and the veterinary curriculum development is progressing. The programme has introduced many positive changes to the Chinese slaughter industry and the signs are positive for good progress.

Unless the benefits to society of measures to protect and improve the welfare of animals are made transparent by means of their valuation they are likely to go unrecognised and cannot easily be weighed against the costs of such measures as required, for example, by policy-makers. A simple single measure scoring system, based on the Welfare Quality® index, is used, together with a choice experiment economic valuation method, to estimate the value that people place on improvements to the welfare of different farm animal species measured on a continuous (0-100) scale. Results from using the method on a survey sample of some 300 people show that it is able to elicit apparently credible values. The survey found that 96% of respondents thought that we have a moral obligation to safeguard the welfare of animals and that over 72% were concerned about the way farm animals are treated. Estimated mean annual willingness to pay for meat from animals with improved welfare of just one point on the scale was £5.24 for beef cattle, £4.57 for pigs and £5.10 for meat chickens. Further development of the method is required to capture the total economic value of animal welfare benefits. Despite this, the method is considered a practical means for obtaining economic values that can be used in the cost-benefit appraisal of policy measures intended to improve the welfare of animals.

Animal protection issues are being advanced increasingly by Non-Government Organisations, yet the views of their supporters are little understood. We surveyed attitudes towards animals and other social issues in 3,462 university students from over 103 universities in eleven European and Asian countries. The extent to which those respondents that supported animal protection organisations had more concern for animals than those who did not support such organisations was investigated, and whether this concern was generalised to other world social issues. Of the respondents, 36% sometimes and 6% very often supported animal protection organisations and 2% identified themselves as key members. Supporters and key members had increased scores on indices that measured their concerns for animal welfare (+ 6%), animals in experimentation (+ 7%), and other major social issues (+ 5%), compared with non-supporters. Supporters were also likely to have lived with pets for longer, suggesting that this was one of the drivers for their increased concern for animals. Key members of the organisations rated the sentience of humans lower (-9%) than other students rated them, and nearer to that of animals. The level of support for the organisations was directly related to avoidance of poultry, pork and beef meat. It is concluded that support for animal protection organisations is an indicator of attitudes towards animals and other social issues, and food consumption habits.

As the profile of farm animal welfare rises within food production chains, in response both to consumer demand and greater ethical engagement with the lives of animals, animal welfare is increasingly being commodified by various foodchain actors. That is to say that, over and above regulatory or assurance scheme compliance, welfare conditions and criteria are being used as a ‘value-added’ component or distinctive selling point for food products, brands or even particular manufacturers and retailers. We argue in this paper that such a commodification process has major implications both for the way in which farm animal welfare is defined and assessed (with greater emphasis being placed either on those welfare elements that lend themselves to commodification processes or on those that respond to consumer interpretations of what ‘good’ welfare might be at a particular time) and for the ways in which farm animal welfare is articulated and presented to food consumers as a component of product value or quality.

Humane euthanasia of cattle represents a challenge to the beef and dairy industries. Penetrating captive bolt, while traditionally considered to be only a stunning method, can be an effective single-step euthanasia method if both the cerebral cortex and brainstem are disrupted. This report describes a preliminary study investigating the likelihood of brainstem disruption for two captive-bolt shot locations. Heads were collected from 15 cattle that died or were euthanised for reason unrelated to the study and were then randomly assigned to one of two shot placement groups. Heads in the first group (n = 7) were shot at the intersection of two lines drawn from the medial canthus to the opposite horn or top of the opposite ear. Heads in the second group (n = 8) were shot at the intersection of two lines drawn for the lateral canthus to the opposite horn or top of the opposite ear. The guns were held perpendicular (as assessed visually) to the plane of the forehead. Shot placement was then assessed using computed tomography and disruption of the brainstem was determined. In the first group, the captive bolt failed to disrupt the brainstem in any of the heads. In the second group, the bolt disrupted the brainstem in 6 of 8 heads. The results suggest that selecting a higher shot location leads more readily to disruption of the brainstem which reduces the risk of regaining sensibility and should therefore improve animal welfare when cattle are euthanised with a penetrating captive bolt.

The scientific literature on horses kept on common land in the UK is limited. Welfare codes and legislation are in place to safeguard the welfare of these horses; however, it has little scientific validation. This study investigated the welfare code compliance and physical welfare of both tethered (T) and free-ranging (F) horses kept on a public common in South Wales. A welfare assessment was developed using resource-based and animal-based measures. The assessment was carried out weekly over a six-week period on all horses found on the common, a total of 37 horses, 21 tethered and 16 free-ranging were observed during some or all visits. The mean prevalence of welfare measures assessed during weekly observations of individual horses was calculated. The highest mean prevalences were recorded for rainscald, hoof overgrowth and hoof cracks. Overall, no significant differences were found between welfare indicators for tethered and free-ranging groups of horses on the same common. There were high levels of compliance with the Welsh Government code of practice covering tethering in some areas, eg having a 4-m gap between tethered horses (96% compliance), however, in other areas there was poor compliance, eg exercise off the tether for a period each day (0% compliance). Changes to management, including provision of shelter, increased access to water, exercise and farrier attention, may significantly improve welfare. However, there was no evidence that tethering itself had a significant negative impact on the physical welfare of horses.