Keywords: Animal-based measurements

Updated Guide to Good Practice: Welfare at Slaughter, which provides advice on how to improve the treatment of animals at slaughter, complementing UK and EU legislation. The guide is intended for food industry professionals.

Article reviewing the multiple potential benefits of AI for the analysis of animals' facial expressions and detection of signs of pain or complex emotions, in which it sometimes performs better than human experts. Researchers are developing algorithms capable of interpreting the emotional states of dogs, cats, horses and primates using deep learning and annotated image databases. However, scientists remain wary of the lack of transparency in the decisions made by AI, and are seeking to combine facial analysis with other indicators to refine the assessment of animal welfare.

Scientific article investigating whether use of a pain scale based on facial expression is an objective and reliable method of assessing dental pain in horses. It concludes that tools designed to identify acute pain lack reliability if used to assess chronic pain, such as dental pain. A more dental-specific ethogram is needed to accurately identify dental pain in horses.

Article summarizing the main conclusions of the expert report "Lignes directrices pour l’établissement de référentiels d’étiquetage du bien-être des animaux" (guidelines  for the establishment of animal welfare labelling standards), published by Anses.

New EFSA Opinion on the welfare of horses during killing for purposes other than human consumption, whether indivudally or on a large scale. The Opinion details three phases: pre-stunning, stunning and bleeding. It identifies potential hazards and describes stunning and killing methods (captive bolt, firearm, lethal injection). Potential risks, preventive measures and animal welfare measurement criteria are described, along with practices deemed unacceptable on welfare.

New EFSA opinion on the welfare of horses at slaughter for human consumption. The opinion details three phases: pre-stunning, stunning and bleeding. It identifies potential hazards and describes stunning and killing methods (captive bolt, firearm, lethal injection), and proposes measures to assess animal welfare consequences. Practices deemed unacceptable on welfare grounds are also listed.

Summary exploring the potential benefits and risks of using livestock technology to improve animal welfare. Its success will depends on public and industry confidence, scientific proof of its effectiveness, and on demonstrable economic and environmental benefits.

Study evaluating the impact of transport and fasting on the physiology and health of unweaned calves. The results show that the physiological changes observed on arrival were related more closely to the duration of feed deprivation rather than that of transport, although muscle fatigue was more marked in calves that had travelled the longest.

Study examining the effect of light color on the pecking behavior and growth of Youhuang broilers. Although light did not influence growth, the cold white light group showed more severe plumage damage and lower serotonin levels than the warm white or red light groups. Warm white light is recommended, as it is more user-friendly and limits pecking.

Study using CatFACS manual coding and facial cues automatically detected by AI to categorize affiliative and non-affiliative  interactions between cats. It shows that rapid facial mimicry is more frequent in affiliative contexts, particularly in ear movements. These results open up new perspectives on the analysis of facial signals and cat emotions using AI.