Published in 2023
This report reminds us of the importance of farming conditions in ensuring the good treatment of rabbits. It also describes the initiatives taken by the rabbit industry to improve animal welfare. It provides a series of recommendations for the various stakeholders in the industry.
Document Types: Opinions
Animal categories:Monogastric
Keywords:Enrichment, Housing, Breeding and rearing systems
Published in 2022
Scientific article comparing the health and welfare levels of breeding rabbits living with their litters and of growing rabbits in four different housing systems: two unenriched cage systems, enriched cages and pens. Although it does not reveal major health differences, it does identify management and environmental factors other than housing that can influence health and welfare.
Document Types: Scientific paper
Animal categories:Monogastric
Keywords: Animal-based measurements, Animaladaptation, Enrichment, Housing, Living environment, Robustness, Welfare indicators
Published in 2022
Scientific study showing that, while unsuitable housing for pet rabbits is found in the homes of owners of all ages, genders and living standards, certain demographic owner characteristics are more frequently associated with poor housing conditions, creating a useful target audience to improve the welfare of these pets.
Document Types: Scientific paper
Animal categories:Monogastric
Keywords:Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Enrichment, Housing, Living environment, Human-animal relationships
Published in 2019
Document Types: Opinions
Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Equines, Monogastrics, Ovines, Porcines, Poultry
Keywords: Consciousness, Pain, Societal issues, Restraint equipment, Carcass quality, Human-animal relationships
Published in 2004
Animal welfare is today an unavoidable part of the political, economic and social landscape of animal production, found in regulations, technical standards, ethical requirements, economic injunctions, etc. This book, through the selection of over a hundred separately authored texts accompanied by commentaries, provides the necessary tools to understand and analyse the origins of the issue of animal welfare, the stakes involved, and possible ways to solve the problems raised. The originality of this book lies in the fact that it selects a group of authors with contrasting opinions, but also in the fact that it draws on a wide range of disciplines: zootechnics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, ethology, history, economics, etc. Organised in four parts, it deals with the history of animal husbandry, sets out the scientific issues relating to welfare and the question of working animals, examines the living conditions of working animals and, last, considers the question of sustainable animal husbandry.
Document Types: Scientific work
Animal categories: Monogastrics, Ruminants
Keywords: Societal issues, Breeding and rearing systems
Published in 2018
Researchers, experts and members of the European Commission and the French Ministry of Agriculture provide an array of answers to key questions: what scientific definition should be given to animal welfare? On what criteria should it be assessed? What national or international rights do respondents take into account? Which animals are involved? What are the obstacles to ensuring the welfare of animals? The answers provided here will strengthen the next steps towards new regulatory provisions.
Document Types: Scientific work
Animal categories: Monogastrics, Ruminants
Keywords: Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Adaptation of the environment to the animal, Societal issues, Human-animal relationships, Breeding and rearing systems
Published in 2015
The origins of the animal welfare sciences can be found in the debate on the moral status of animals in philosophy, the introduction of the notion of stress in physiology and the description of animal behaviours by ethologists.... We believe that the issue of animal welfare needs to break down the boundaries between and across disciplines and to engage stakeholders and society as a whole, in order to build a holistic approach towards animal welfare and improve it in an effective way.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: Mammals, Monogastrics, Fish, Poultry
Published in 2015
This article aims to bring together in a single document the knowledge acquired over recent years on the mechanisms of the appearance and modulation of pain in animals. The review is divided into three parts. The first describes the different stages of development, transmission and integration of the nociceptive messages involved in the onset of pain (sensory and emotional components). The second describes the different types of modulation that can activate or inhibit the transmission of nociceptive messages. The third describes the different neurophysiological processes that accompany pain and can modulate it (inflammation, activation of the autonomic nervous system and the neuroendocrine system).
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Equines, Mammals, Monogastrics, Ovines, Fish, Porcines, Rodents, Ruminants, Poultry
Keywords: Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Adaptation of the environment to the animal, Animal-based measurements, Pain, Experimentation, Welfare indicators, Brain integration, Mutilation, Cognitive processes, Stress
Published in 2016
In order to achieve the objective evaluation of emotions in farm animals, the Agri-Bien-Être Animal network (an interdisciplinary group created by INRA in 1998, www6.inra.fr/agri_bien_etre_animal) has proposed experimental strategies based on cognitive evaluation theory in human psychology (Boissy et al 2007, Box 1). According to this conceptual framework, emotions are generated by the cognitive evaluation of a situation confronting the animal. Although the characterisation of these situations is complex (Forkman et al 2007), it is suggested that the animal would evaluate them using basic criteria for relevance (suddenness, novelty, etc) and involvement (predictability, etc), the degree to which they correspond to expectations, and according to its own adaptive capacities (controllability of the situation). At the end of this evaluation phase, the emotion felt by the animal is translated into emotional expression. It is the latter that can be assessed by the objective measurement of behavioural and physiological emotional responses (Box 2). By applying this conceptual framework to research in the neurobiology of emotions, the representation of the neural circuit of emotions can be built around those structures involved in the perception of the environment, information processing and the expression of emotional responses (Figure 1). From an experimental point of view, this theoretical framework requires the characterisation and standardisation of situations likely to serve as a trigger and the characterisation of the emotional responses expressed by individual animals in relation to the neurobiological actors studied.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Equines, Monogastrics, Ovines, Porcines, Ruminants, Poultry
Keywords: Anxiety, Experimentation, Brain integration, Memory, Neurogenesis, Fear, Stress
Published in 2007
Fear is probably the most-studied emotion in pets. In this overview, we attempt to establish the levels of repeatability and validity for fear tests carried out on cattle, pigs, sheep and goats, poultry and horses. We focus our review on the three most common types of fear tests: the arena test (open field), the novel object test and the stress test. For some tests, e.g. tonic immobility in poultry, there is a good body of literature on the factors affecting test results, test validity and age dependency. However, there are relatively few such well-defined and validated tests, and the element that is particularly lacking for most tests is information on robustness, i.e. what aspects can be modified without affecting the validity of the tests. The relative lack of standardised tests is an obstacle to the development of applied ethology as a science.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Equines, Monogastrics, Ovines, Porcines, Ruminants, Poultry
Keywords: Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Animal-based measurements, Anxiety, Experimentation, Welfare indicators, Memory, Fear, Cognitive processes, Stress, Vocalisation
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