Blue whales and seismic surveying in Australia

Blue whale populations were devastated in the last century by commercial whaling, which reduced blue whales from a quarter of a million to just a few hundred animals. Australian waters are home to both the Antarctic blue whale and a smaller sub- species, the pygmy blue whale. Blue whale numbers have increased a little since whaling ended but their recovery has been slow and numbers still remain in the few thousands. This analysis looks at the scale of seismic testing by the offshore oil and gas industry in important blue whale habitat in Australia. Blue whales in Australian waters Blue whales come to Australian waters to feed in just a few unique locations. There are three main areas: the Perth Canyon (March – May), the Bonney Upwelling off Victoria and South Australia (November – April) and the waters off Kangaroo Island extending into the eastern Great Australian Bight (November – May). Feeding is also thought to take place elsewhere off the WA coast from Cape Naturaliste northwards and also off Ningaloo Reef as pygmy blue whales migrate northwards (March – August) from Australia to Indonesian waters where they go to give birth to and nurse their young, before returning south (October – December) to feeding grounds in Australian waters. Blue whales are listed as endangered under Australian federal legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act)

Animal Welfare

Livestock Production/Industries,

Development of an advisory system that supports good animal welfare in organic production in Norway

Organic agriculture wishes to emphasise animal welfare, and aims to be at the forefront with regard to promoting the welfare of farm animals. It is therefore important to increase the expertise in the field of animal welfare in organic farming systems among veterinarians, advisers and farmers. An advisory service that includes on-farm assessment of animal welfare will contribute to securing a high level of animal welfare in organic production. To meet the need for information and expertise, an advisory and development project ”Good animal welfare in organic dairy farming” started in May 2003 and will last until the end of 2005. The project’s main goal is to develop and establish a permanent advisory service aimed at securing a high level of animal health and welfare in organic dairy farming

Health and welfare of organic livestock

Animal health and welfare are important principles of organic animal husbandry. In the Netherlands organic animal husbandry has proven to perform better than the conventional sector on many aspects of animal welfare. The Dutch organic animal husbandry sector has recognised animal health and welfare as crucial and maintains a strong focus on further improvement. Dutch scientists are working to advance the health and welfare of organically kept animals. Additionally, they focus on innovations and directly applicable solutions to specific problems concerning diseases and behaviour. This research is often carried out in close collaboration with farmer

The sooner the better: The arguments for the use of Extended Welfare Assessment Grids in animal welfare cases

Animals are protected under national animal welfare legislation, against intentional acts of cruelty and a failure to act, resulting in neglect and causing an animal to suffer. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) bears the responsibility of investigating and prosecuting the majority of animal welfare offences in England and Wales. In recent years, how they operate has been criticised, and it has been debated whether they should be able to bring private prosecutions, and what their role should actually be. This criticism calls for a change in the way in which the RSPCA approach cases of animal welfare, to strengthen their continuing role in ensuring positive animal welfare is achieved and, where not, prosecuted. This paper outlines the need for a new approach and how it can be managed. Honess and Wolfensohn (Altern Lab Anim 38:205, 2010) have developed an Extended Welfare Assessment Grid (EWAG), a visualisation mapping tool of welfare impact, which has been useful for assessing the welfare of animals used in laboratories. This tool has proven so useful, veterinarians are now using it in veterinary hospitals to help assess whether an animal is likely to further deteriorate, due to disease and illness, and to show any short-term welfare impact on the animal (Williams in UFAW conference, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018). This paper will explore the potential for the EWAG to be adapted to assess the welfare of animals when owners are not meeting the welfare needs of their companion animals. RSPCA can use it to support their assessments of the current welfare of an animal under a person’s ownership and whether the animal’s welfare will deteriorate should they remain under that ownership. The EWAG will be a useful tool for those working in animal welfare, such as the RSPCA, to help organisations to intervene earlier, work in partnership with an owner, and support their claims of a risk to animal welfare

Animal welfare in the reformed Common Agricultural Policy: wherefore art thou?

Against the backdrop of the recently reformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), this article considers the potential for improved standards of farm animal welfare within the Treaty objectives of the European Union. CAP Reform presents the first real opportunity to assess the impact of the animal welfare Treaty provision emanating from the Lisbon amendments and the extent to which animal welfare has been integrated into the CAP. By linking the projected added value of enhanced farm animal welfare practices with the CAP’s broader priorities, its greening initiative and, essentially, the Europe 2020 strategy, an evaluation is undertaken of the potential of raised animal welfare standards in agriculture to contribute towards attaining the CAP instruments’ specified objectives in the period 2014–2020. The reformed CAP instruments are disappointing in that they do not aim explicitly and directly to improve farm animal welfare. Acknowledging that the CAP reform process will continue, the improvement of farm animal welfare should be stated expressly to be a priority of the CAP beyond 2020. ‘In effect, a new social contract is needed between farmers and society which sees the delivery of public goods as part of a modern approach to agriculture where food, fibre and fuel are supplied in ways that are resource efficient, help address climate change and deliver high levels of biodiversity and farm animal welfare, within the context of diverse and vibrant rural areas.’

Farm-Animal Welfare, Legislation, and Trade

The US has among the weakest farm-animal-welfare standards in the developed world. Although improvements in farm-animal welfare are economically feasible, nations and states enacting protective regulation are threatened by competition with cheaper, non-compliant imports. Although recognition in trade agreements and restrictions on sale could help to protect animal welfare, they may rarely be politically feasible. Campaigns directed at consumers and retailers are likely to be more cost-effective than production-related regulations in improving animal welfare and are also compatible with abolitionist objectives

Does organic farming face distinctive livestock welfare issues? - A conceptual analysis

The recent development and growth of organic livestock farming and the related development of national and international regulations has fuelled discussions among scientists and philosophers concerning the proper conceptualisation of animal welfare. These discussions on livestock welfare in organic farming draw on the conventional discussions and disputes on animal welfare, which involve issues such as different definitions of welfare (clinical health, absence of suffering, sum of positive and negative experiences, etc.), the possibility for objective measures of animal welfare and the acceptable level of welfare. It seems clear that livestock welfare is a value-laden concept and that animal welfare science cannot be made independent of questions of values and ethics. The question investigated here is whether those values that underpin organic farming, in particular, also affect the interpretation of livestock welfare and, if so, how. While some of the issues raised in connection with organic farming are relatively uncontroversial, others are not. The introduction of organic farming values seems to introduce new criteria for what counts a good animal welfare, as well as a different ethical basis for taking moral decisions on welfare. Organic farming embodies distinctive systemic or communitarian ethical ideas and the organic values are connected to a systemic conception of nature, of agriculture, of the farm and of the animal. The new criteria of welfare are related to concepts such as naturalness, harmony, integrity and care. While the organic values overlap with those involved in the conventional discussion of animal welfare, some of them suggest a need to set new priorities and to re-conceptualise animal welfare – for example, with respect to 'naturalness', in relation to the possibilities for expression of natural behaviour and in relation to animal integrity as a concept for organismic harmony. The organic perspective also seems to suggest a wider range of solutions to welfare problems than changes in farm routines or operations on the animals. The systemic solutions include the choice and reproduction of suitable breeds, changes in the farm structure, and changes in the larger production and consumption system - including consumer perceptions and preferences. But the organic values may also call for sacrifices of individual welfare in a conventional sense in order to advance welfare from the perspective of organic farming. Whether this is good or bad cannot be decided without entering into an inquiry and discussion of the values and ethics involved