Dairy Animal Welfare from a Producer, Consumer & Industry Perspective By Jenny Hanson, Communications Manager
How do consumers and non-farming citizens think about animal welfare? What do companies expect from producers who supply their milk? How can farmers address these expectations? GENEX delegates and alternates attending the cooperative’s annual meeting learned about the science of animal welfare from Jennifer Van Os, Assistant Professor & Extension Specialist-Animal Welfare, Department of Dairy Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She made great points worth sharing with all GENEX members and customers.
Animal Welfare – What is it? Animal welfare describes the state of the animal ranging from poor welfare to good welfare. It’s based on outcomes and is facility-type and farm-size neutral. There are two main disciplines in the study of animal welfare. As Jennifer Van Os shares, “One is the biological science, which I’m trained in. This means understanding what’s important from the animal’s perspective using techniques such as looking at the animal’s physiology, behavior, etc. The other approach is to use social science, which is about understanding people and what motivates their attitudes, values and how they think.” Jennifer divides the biological science of animal welfare (understanding the cow) into three categories.
1. Body. This category looks at an animal’s bodily health or biological function. It’s about health and performance and includes many measurable points like growth, productivity, body condition, reproduction, lameness, hygiene, etc. 2. Mind. This category focuses on the animal’s psychological wellbeing. It’s not about the complex human emotions; it’s about if the animal is in a negative state of well-being (experiencing pain, fear, stress, hunger, thirst) or a positive state (experiencing contentment, pleasure). 3. Nature. This means meeting the animal’s behavioral needs or having a lack of abnormal behavior. For instance, for dairy cows a behavioral characteristic is lying time. Spending time lying down is normal behavior.
Body
Mind
Nature
These categories are not mutually exclusive. Instead, there is overlap. Jennifer also explains the purpose of the three-category framework is to help “better understand how different stakeholders prioritize these aspects of animal welfare. It also illustrates that each aspect has ways to scientifically evaluate what’s important to the animal.” Continued on next page.
HORIZONS
//
27
