Evidence-based swine welfare: Where are we and where are we going?

Abstract

Behavior, ethology and welfare Animal welfare is not a term that arose in science to express a scientific concept; rather, it arose in Western civilization to express ethical concern regarding the treatment of animals. There are three schools of welfare, and which school an individual subscribes to will often influence the philosophical definitions of welfare to which they subscribe. The first school is a feeling based school, which would include some reference to the importance of ascertaining what an animal feels in terms of pleasure, suffering, distress, and pain. The second school is a functioning-based school in which there is a focus on the fitness and health of animals. The third school is a nature-based school that values the natural behaviors of animals under natural conditions. The idea of feelings being important for welfare was developed by Duncan 1 and Duncan and Dawkins,2 and then the suggestion was made that, in fact, feelings were the only thing that mattered.3 ln turn, because of these various schools of thought, animal welfare researchers are still unable to agree on one animal welfare definition, but the measures that can be used to help assess how an animal is coping within defined parameters have been agreed upon. Animal welfare is an issue that involves several scientific disciplines that are part of the animal sciences, which include performance, physiology, anatomy, health, and behavior.4 Perhaps the discipline that has been most closely associated with welfare is the study of animal behavior, known as ethology.4 The term applied ethology is often used to designate the subdiscipline of studying the behavior of animals that are managed in some way by humans. Gonyou4 noted, Applied ethology involving agricultural species has become so closely associated with the scientifi,c study of animal welfare that some use the terms behavior, ethology and welfare as virtual synonyms. 4 The objective of this paper will be to discuss three case studies using pig behavior that may be used on farm by a swine practioner