14-15 million yak (Poephagus grunniens, or Bos grunniens) provide the mainstay of life of several million people in the vast plateau (approx. 3 million sq. km) on “the roof of the world” - the provinces of Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu in western China, with the largest populations. Other provinces of China and countries, including Nepal, India, Bhutan, Mongolia (0.5 million yak) and some of the Russian Federation have smaller, but locally important populations. A small herd has existed at Whipsnade Wild Animal Park in England for about half a century and a population of 2-3 thousand has now grown in North America.

Animals are an object of concern, and, as we extend our control over the earth’s resources, ever more so.

The old way of distinguishing humans from other animals - in terms of the soul, God’s purpose, and the after-life - is no longer universally accepted, and the Darwinian theory of species has unsettled people’s moral perceptions. Is there any way of making the distinction between humans and other animals, therefore, that could recommend itself to modern, secular, sceptical people who believe nevertheless in the difference between right and wrong?

A slow but steady shift in perspective on the need to address ethical issues within the professional activity of animal scientists has been underway for almost twenty years. Increasingly the issue is less whether animal scientists should be discussing ethical issues in their classes, at their professional meetings and in their interactions with client groups, but how they should do so. This paper will provide some arguments in support of this general trend, and will make some suggestions about how animal scientists can increase their capacity to address ethical issues as part of their professional responsibility.

During the 20th century scientists have made genuine progress in explaining and modifying usefully the processes of life. The main leap forward was, of course, the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics at the beginning of the century. Since the 1930s this theory has been put to use in an ever more efficient and systematic way, particularly in breeding domestic animals with desired traits. Thus the animal breeder can now plan how he wants future generations of domestic animals to be, knowing that the plans will work.

Many of the ethical issues regarding the livestock production systems of the late twentieth century have concentrated on the process of intensification. The extent of public disquiet at the welfare and ethical implications of intensification has been reflected in the burgeoning membership of animal welfare and animal rights organisations. The reasons for this increase as well as the impact that it has had on the livestock industry can be traced back to the 1960s, to factors such as the growing urbanisation of the population and especially the emergence of the animal rights movement which focused attention on a wide range of issues including the human exploitation of other animal species. This in turn led to a demarcation between those who supported the animal welfare cause and those who argued for animal rights.

Reducing costs for unit output, be it per kg liveweight gain, per kg carcass gain or per kg saleable meat yield will be essential for the future of the UK beef industry. Traditionally emphasis has been placed on reducing feed costs per unit output and data from MLC’s Beefplan shows that between 65 – 82% of the variable cost of UK beef systems are accounted for by feed costs. However, with fixed costs being similar to total variable costs, it is also important to reduce the major components of fixed costs specifically associated with the production of feed and feeding it which are labour and machinery. As far as nutrition/feeding of beef cattle is concerned, there are a number of areas where a reduction in costs can be achieved using existing knowledge but in other areas there are obvious gaps in knowledge which require further research. However, there appears to very little research into aspects of the nutrition/production of beef cattle going on, or being published, in the UK. (Only 4 out of a total of 113 papers presented at this conference are on nutrition/production of beef cattle.)

For thousands of years, perhaps ever since the domestication of cattle, farmers have favoured, and therefore selected, certain animals above others in an attempt to create a population of beasts best suited to their needs. Over time the sophistication with which breeding cattle have been selected has improved as technology and understanding has developed. In Great Britain today the genetic improvement of cattle makes use of the three main methods available: breed substitution, crossbreeding and within-breed selection. This paper concentrates on the last of these but recognises the importance of the first two in commercial practice. For example there has been considerable substitution of native British beef breeds with continental breeds during the 1960s and 70s and there is continued use of crossbreeding on dairy cows and in suckler beef production. Within breed selection and performance recording is valuable for the continued improvement of pedigree beef cattle and as a means for commercial producers to select suitable herd sires.

JSR Farms at Givendale runs a commercial cross-bred suckler herd of 100 cows alongside a pedigree Charolais herd of 110 cows. The Charolais breeding programme is focused on improving the output from the cross-bred herd by using BLUP to select sires with superior genetic merit for production traits. Breeding stock with high EBV’s for growth and carcase traits are selected for re-breeding and attention is also paid to 200 day milk EBV’s and to controlling the level of calving difficulty. Home-bred replacement heifers are selected with Beef Values ranked in the top 10% of the National breed and the stud of reference sires used in the programme have Beef Values in the top 1% of the breed.

Food animal health impacts on productivity, animal welfare and human health. What happens to an animal on the farm and its resulting health status has an important influence on the quality, safety and wholesomeness of the meat and offal obtained from that animal. Our research has largely been focused on the environmental influences on beef cattle and sheep health, the farm environment and management, in particular and how it impacts on veterinary public health, i.e. food safety, and animal welfare. The main objective of the study was to examine the use of information about the health and management of cattle and lambs on the farm to predict the risk of visible lesions at slaughter. Th e feasibility of identifying farm-level risk factors for gross lesions detectable during post-mortem meat inspection has been investigated, from which the findings of the sheep study have been published (Edwards, et al. 1999).

Beef cattle can have a wide range of positive and negative impacts on the environment. Some of these impacts are general to ruminants, whilst other are specific to cattle, and, because of the type of management systems and habitats that they graze, there are some impacts which are specific to beef cattle. Impacts are often classified in terms of their potential to provide benefits and damage to the atmosphere, water, soil and vegetation. This classification will be issued below to explore the most important ways that cattle, and their land use, influence the environment and the extent to which scientists can increase understanding to influence these impacts.

Genetic selection has proved itself to be the most powerful tool available for the improvement of livestock. Over the last 40 years the efficiency of livestock production has been increased radically by the success of animal breeding. Where animal breeders have been successful it has been through the application of relatively simple rules – selection based on traits that can be measured in a repeatable manner and where variation between individuals has both a genetic component and economic relevance. Until recently, this has meant that breeders have focussed on efficiency traits – for example growth rate or milk yield - and in some cases, certain easily measured aspects of quality, such as overall fatness as inferred from ultrasonically measured fat depth. As both the breeding industry and consumers have become more sophisticated, there has been an increasing focus on traits associated with reproduction, welfare and disease and quality. Such traits can be more difficult to improve by selection because heritabilities are low (i.e. only a small amount of variation between animals is genetic in origin, such as for some reproduction and disease associated traits). In addition, such traits may be difficult or expensive to measure (e.g. disease related traits, or quality related traits measured in the laboratory or by sensory panels) and have economic values that are difficult to quantify.

Selective breeding, based on feather pecking bouts per hen, can be an effective method of reducing feather pecking in a controlled research environment (Kjaer 2000). For selective breeding against feather pecking to be applied on a commercial scale using similar methodology would be extremely time consuming. A simple, quick test which predicted a young bird’s likelihood of developing feather pecking would eliminate the need to observe feather pecking behaviour or expose birds to damaging pecking from conspecifics as part of the selection process. A predictive test could also increase the rate of genetic progress and reduce the cost of implementing a selection programme.

The fallow deer is a generalist herbivore that eats different plants containing secondary compounds in various amounts. From observations of foraging behaviour it is known that large herbivores tend to eat from a variety of locations and, over the short term, typically ingest small quantities of a variety of foods and sample novel foods rather than making an immediate decision to either eat large amounts or to reject the food (Freeland and Janzen 1974). The diet choice of large herbivores is influenced by the presence of nutrients and toxins (Provenza 1995), but another factor that could influence the diet choice is the relative abundance of different plants and plant types. In order to study these effects we have performed experiments on the effect of the relative abundance of different food types on diet choice in fallow deer.

Social learning is said to occur when social interaction facilitates the acquisition of a novel pattern of behaviour. It usually takes the form of an experienced animal (the demonstrator) performing a behaviour such that a naive animal (the observer) subsequently expresses the same novel behaviour, earlier or more completely than it would have done using individual learning. Social learning is involved in the transmission of a great variety of behaviours, e.g. tool-use, food preferences, and has also been implicated in maladaptive behaviours such as stereotypies in voles. In studies of social learning, the observers usually see the demonstrators receive a reward for performing the required behaviour. But, the role of the reward has rarely been investigated and results have been equivocal. Understanding the role of demonstrator reward on social learning is necessary to assess the cognitive abilities of individuals of different species, and aids understanding of the transmission of maladaptive behaviours.

The effect of male hierarchy on the sexual activity of individuals is unclear from the recent scientific literature and a clear distinction between the social and sexual aspects of this hierarchy is lacking. Moreover, the effect of male team size on the extent of sexual competition between individuals has not been examined in the recently developed group mating systems for pigs, such as the Dynamic Service System for gilts (DSS). The main objectives of the present study were therefore to examine the effect of boar sexual status on the sexual activity of individuals and the influence of boar team size on the reproductive output of a DSS.

The adverse physical effects of atmospheric ammonia on stock (Charles and Payne, 1966; Wolfe et al. 1968) and stockpeople (Kirkhorn and Garry, 2000) have been documented, but broiler chickens’ perception of this aspect of their own welfare has not been fully investigated. Previous studies have demonstrated a delayed avoidance of high ammonia concentrations (Jones et al., 2000) but we could not categorically claim that this was a true aversion to ammonia since the birds may simply have expressed a preference for fresh air based on their previous experience. This experiment was designed to establish whether avoidance of ammonia in broiler chickens was an intrinsic aversion, independent of previous atmospheric experience.

It is generally accepted that routine invasive husbandry procedures, such as disbudding and dehorning, cause considerable distress in farmed animals. In the case of dehorning, it has repeatedly been shown that calves exhibit many pain related symptoms both during (e.g., withdrawal from noxious stimulus) the procedure and for some hours post procedure (e.g., rearing, tripping, head rubbing, etc.). Little is known about the long-term consequences of dehorning as previous studies have only monitored responses for up to 48 hours. The objectives of this work were to examine the long-term response of calves to hot-iron dehorning and to determine the effectiveness of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) for reducing post-operative distress.

Understanding behavioural diversity is important for commercial production, animal behaviour and welfare. One interpretation of individual differences in behaviour is that these represent different strategies for coping with a changing environment. For example, Hessing et al. (1994) categorized pigs as active/resistant or passive/non-resistant, based on each pig’s reaction to restraint. However, these conclusions have been criticized. For example, Jensen et al. (1995) argued that for two such categories to exist, there must be a bimodal distribution of the scores from a population, which Hessing et al. (1994) failed to demonstrate. Determining individual behavioural characteristics and any relationship they may have with performance has been the focus of recent research. The objective of this experiment was to determine the primary characteristics that distinguish individual pigs.

The aims of this study were to determine behavioural and heart rate responses to isolation and a novel stimulus and to investigate the relationships with scores from a questionnaire developed to assess anxiety in horses.