Welfare implications of changes in production systems for laying hens
Published in 2006
Assessment of the welfare of laying hens in different production systems. Tool for assessing the welfare of hens.
Document Types: Scientific work
Animal category: Poultry
Welfare Quality® assessment protocol for poultry
Published in 2009
The document sets out the indicators used to assess the welfare of poultry (broiler and laying hens), including the rearing and abattoir phases. The chosen indicators concern the resources available to the animal (housing, activities), measurements taken from the animal, and a qualitative evaluation. The document explains registration procedures, qualitative and frequency scoring methods, and the aggregation of criteria from four of the five domains of welfare: nutrition, environment, health and appropriate behaviours.
Document Types: Technical work
Animal categories: Poultry
Keywords: Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Adaptation of the environment to the animal, Animal-based measurements, Anxiety, Livestock buildings, Pain, Enrichment, Environment, Welfare indicators, Housing, Restraint equipment, Living environment, Mutilation, Fear, Human-animal relationships, Stress
Régulation des émotions chez l’animal d’élevage : focus sur les acteurs neurobiologiques
Published in 2016
The issue of the emotions of farm animals is part of a wider drive to improve farming conditions by taking animal welfare into account. The genesis of emotions derives from the cognitive capacity of individuals to perceive, evaluate and react to their environment. …. The parts of the brain involved in the neural network for emotions are linked to the perception and processing of information from the environment, and/or in the expression of emotional responses. ... . In light of this, it is now necessary to study the effects of early experiences on the development of the neural network for emotions and to better understand the role of cognitive evaluation in the genesis of emotions.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Equines, Ovines, Poultry
Keywords: Anxiety, Consciousness, Brain integration, Metacognition, Neurogenesis, Stress
Bien-Etre animal
Published in 2007
Special issue on Animal Welfare, containing 14 original articles on aims, methodology and purpose, ethical foundations, variants for different species, how it is perceived by the animal industries.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Equines, Ovines, Fish, Porcines, Poultry
Keywords: Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Adaptation of the environment to the animal, Animal-based measurements, Consciousness, Pain, Societal issues, Welfare indicators, Living environment,Cognitive processes, Human-animal relationships, Stress
Hommes et animaux d’élevage au travail : vers une approche pluridisciplinaire des pratiques relationnelles
Published in 2012
The legal recognition of animals as a "sentient beings" means that any consideration of the working relationship between humans and animals in livestock farming must take into account the points of view of both the producer and the animal. In a wider societal context, this has implications for efficient working practices and quality of life in the agricultural professions as much as it does for animal welfare. This review article focuses on multidisciplinary approaches, in particular those that combine the social sciences and ethology, to the understanding and improvement of the farming practices that determine the Human-animal relationshipsshipsship. The article points to the value of describing and evaluating differences in producers' relational practices to achieve a Human-animal relationshipsshipsship that is beneficial to both humans and animals.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Equines, Ovines, Porcines, Poultry
Keywords: Fear, Human-animal relationships, Stress
Petite histoire de l’étude du bien-être animal : comment cet objet sociétal est devenu un objet scientifique transdisciplinaire
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
Social acceptability of farmed animals in France: inventory and analysis of the main controversies based on the views of different stakeholders
Published in 2015
In a context where livestock farming and its practices are frequently called into question, an analysis of the points of disagreement in different sectors (pigs, poultry, cattle, sheep and goats) was carried out within the framework of the Elevages Demain Scientific Interest Group (GIS). A literature review was conducted to understand the basis for social concerns about livestock farming and assess their robustness. At the same time, some thirty interviews were conducted with various stakeholders involved in the debates - professionals in the sector, employees of voluntary associations, journalists and distributors - in order to identify and describe the main areas of contention over livestock farming in France. The work highlights strongly-held and long-standing concerns on the part of the public with regard to livestock farming, which cannot be dismissed as the consequences of 'fads'.
Document Types: Scientific review
Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Ovines, Porcines, Poultry
Keywords: Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Adaptation of the environment to the animal, Societal issues, Environment, Livestock farming system
Douleurs animales. 1. Les mécanismes
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
Emotional regulation in livestock: focus on neurobiological actors
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
A critical review of fear tests used on cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry and horses
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
