Life Sciences Commons^™

A Year Of Wins For Farmed Animals, Lewis Bollard

General – Farm Animal Issues

Although the European Union shelved its ambitious farmed animal welfare reforms, there were other “wins” for farmed animals in 2023. There were 130 new corporate pledges to eliminate cages for laying hens and the worst abuses of broiler chickens. So far, over 1,000 corporate pledges have been fully implemented, and 39% of American hens, 60% of European hens, and 80% of British hens are cage-free, up from 6%, 41%, and 48%, respectively, a decade ago. The US Supreme Court upheld California’s Proposition 12, which bans the sale of eggs, pork, and veal from caged animals and their offspring in California. …

Comparing U.S. Groups’ Openness To Pro-Animal Actions, Jo Anderson, Zach Wulderk

USA

As animal advocates know, an outreach tactic that is successful with one person will not necessarily be successful with all people. Advocates rarely launch campaigns with no idea of who will be seeing their ‘asks’ (i.e., requests for pro-animal actions). Even in the case of passive tactics such as billboards, advocates may know who frequents that part of the city. For example, they may be near a university, meaning their audience will include a high proportion of students. The United States public is diverse and groups of people can differ greatly in their opinions. Rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach, …

Unveiling The Nexus: The Interdependence Of Animal Welfare, Environment & Sustainable Development, World Federation For Animals (Wfa)

Nexus – UNEP – Animal Welfare, Environment, Sustainable Development

On 2 March 2022, the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) adopted the Animal Welfare - Environment - Sustainable Development Nexus Resolution. In this resolution, UNEA acknowledged that "animal welfare can contribute to addressing environmental challenges". UNEA further acknowledged animal welfare's contribution to "promoting the One Health approach and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals." To understand these links, UNEA requested the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to analyse and produce a report for the next convening of UNEA on the nexus between animal welfare, the environment, and sustainable development. "Unveiling the Nexus: The interdependence of animal welfare, environment & sustainable development" illuminates the …

Bringing Back Former Vegans And Vegetarians: An Obstacle Analysis, Jo Anderson, Coni Arévalo

Diet

People have a variety of motivations for switching to plant-based diets, yet not all people who begin the transition to a vegan or vegetarian (collectively called veg*n) diet maintain it long-term. In fact, Faunalytics’ study of current and former veg*ns (2014) found that the number of lapsed (former) vegans and vegetarians in the United States far surpasses the number of current veg*ns, and most who lapse do so within a year. Are these people the low-hanging fruit for diet advocates? They could be—there are many of them and they’re clearly at least somewhat willing to go veg*n, so maybe more …

Aquaculture In Africa: Aquatic Animal Welfare, Impact On The Environment And The Sustainability Of The Sector, Mwenda M. Mbaka, Janice H. Cox, Stephen Ronan

Aquaculture

The African aquaculture sector recorded the fastest growth in the world between 2006-2018, averaging 10% or more, and is expected to partially fill the growing fish supply-demand gap up to 2063. In 2018, there were about 1.2 million aquafarmers across the continent, an increase from 920 thousand in 2014. According to the African Development Bank, expansion of aquaculture in Africa is hampered by "the overwhelming predominance of tilapia farming, which relies heavily on the production of fingerlings from a limited number of genetically improved strains that are resistant to the many diseases affecting this species, and on the production of …

Nexus Between Animal Welfare, Environment, And Sustainable Development: Resource Document, Wellbeing International

Nexus – UNEP – Animal Welfare, Environment, Sustainable Development

This Resource Document has been developed to explore the Nexus (links) between Animal Welfare, the Environment, and Sustainable Development. The document includes relevant citations and reports addressing the topics encompassed by the Nexus. It will be maintained as a “living document” (subject to revision) in the WellBeing International Studies Repository. The original document and subsequent revisions will be kept in the Repository to provide a record of the changes.

Chinese Consumers’ Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare: Behaviors, Beliefs, And Responses To Messaging, Jo Anderson

General - Animal Protection

Despite being comparatively neglected until recently, the suffering of animals in Asia is starting to command more attention from global animal advocacy activists. In particular, as the largest country in the world by both human and farmed animal population, and among the largest when measured by economy and land mass, China plays a central role here. However, the key question of how best to improve outcomes for farmed animals in China remains difficult to answer, due to the recency of the movement and a comparative lack of research on the topic.

Although China’s per capita meat consumption is lower than …

Going Vegan Or Vegetarian: Motivations & Influences, Faunalytics, Jo Anderson, Marina Milyavskaya

Diet

After studying hundreds of U.S. and Canadian consumers during their transition to vegetarianism or veganism (collectively referred to as veg*nism), a new report from research organization Faunalytics found that 42% of people’s veg*n journeys were motivated by health, 20% by animal protection, and 18% by environmental concern. For animal advocates interested in helping new vegans and vegetarians maintain their change of lifestyle, study results suggest a focus on self-driven motivations (like personal values or moral identity) and experiences with animal advocacy.

Cats And Wildlife: An Animal Welfare Perspective., John Hadidian

Management - General

While there is no question that outdoors cats have an impact on wildlife, the extent and significance of this impact is the subject of considerable debate. The controversy surrounding outdoor cats can be traced back at least a century, with contemporary claims of threats to global biodiversity bringing animal welfare and conservation interests directly into opposition, largely over the means of managing conflicts. The irony in this is that cat defenders and cat detractors generally agree that it is in the best interests of cats that they should be shielded from the vagaries of outdoor life. While there are practical …

Sequential Analysis Of Livestock Herding Dog And Sheep Interactions, Jonathan Early, Jessica Alders, Elizabeth R. Arnott, Claire M. Wade, Paul Mcgreevy

Interactive Behavior Collection

Livestock herding dogs are crucial contributors to Australian agriculture. However, there is a dearth of empirical studies of the behavioural interactions between dog and livestock during herding. A statistical approach that may reveal cause and effect in such interactions is lag sequential analysis. Using 48 video recordings of livestock herding dogs and sheep in a yard trial competition, event-based (time between behaviours is irrelevant) and time-based (time between behaviours is defined) lag sequential analyses identified several significant behavioural interactions (adjusted residuals greater than 2.58; the maximum likelihood-ratio chi-squared statistic for all eight contingency tables identified all sequences as highly significant …

Sea Wrack Delivery And Accumulation On Islands: Factors That Mediate Marine Nutrient Permeability, Sara B. Wickham, Nancy Shackelford, Chris T. Darimont, Wiebe Nijland, Luba Y. Reshitnyk, John D. Reynolds, Brian M. Starzomski

Biogeography and Ecological Opportunity Collection

Sea wrack provides an important vector of marine-derived nutrients to many terrestrial environments. However, little is known about the processes that facilitate wrack transport, deposition, and accumulation on islands. Three broad factors can affect the stock of wrack along shorelines: the amount of potential donor habitat nearby, climatic events that dislodge seaweeds and transfer them ashore, and physical characteristics of shorelines that retain wrack at a site. To determine when, where, and how wrack accumulates on island shorelines, we surveyed 455 sites across 101 islands in coastal British Columbia, Canada. At each site, we recorded wrack biomass, species composition, and …

Social Referencing In The Domestic Horse, Anne Schrimpf, Marie-Sophie Single, Christian Nawroth

Recognition Collection

Dogs and cats use human emotional information directed to an unfamiliar situation to guide their behavior, known as social referencing. It is not clear whether other domestic species show similar socio-cognitive abilities in interacting with humans. We investigated whether horses (n = 46) use human emotional information to adjust their behavior to a novel object and whether the behavior of horses differed depending on breed type. Horses were randomly assigned to one of two groups: an experimenter positioned in the middle of a test arena directed gaze and voice towards the novel object with either (a) a positive or (b) …

Musical Dogs: A Review Of The Influence Of Auditory Enrichment On Canine Health And Behavior, Abigail Lindig, Paul Mcgreevy, Angela Crean

Stress Collection

Music therapy yields many positive health outcomes in humans, but the effects of music on the health and welfare of nonhuman animals vary greatly with the type of music played, the ethology of the species, and the personality and learning history of individual animals. One context in which music therapy may be used to enhance animal welfare is to alleviate stress in domestic environments. Here, we review studies of the effects of music exposure on dogs as a case study for the implementation of music therapy in veterinary medicine. Nine reports of experimental testing for the therapeutic effects of music …

Social Learning In Solitary Juvenile Sharks, Catarina Vila Pouca, Dennis Heinrich, Charlie Huveneers, Culum Brown

Social Behavior Collection

Social learning can be a shortcut for acquiring locally adaptive information. Animals that live in social groups have better access to social information, but gregarious and nonsocial species are also frequently exposed to social cues. Thus, social learning might simply reflect an animal's general ability to learn rather than an adaptation to social living. Here, we investigated social learning and the effect of frequency of social exposure in nonsocial, juvenile Port Jackson sharks, Heterodontus portusjacksoni. We compared (1) Individual Learners, (2) Sham-Observers, paired with a naïve shark, and (3) Observers, paired with a trained demonstrator, in a novel foraging task. …

Behavioural Risks In Female Dogs With Minimal Lifetime Exposure To Gonadal Hormones, Melissa J. Starling, Anne Fawcett, Bethany Wilson, James Serpell, Paul Mcgreevy

Physiology Collection

Spaying of female dogs is a widespread practice, performed primarily for population control. While the consequences of early spaying for health are still being debated, the consequences for behaviour are believed to be negligible. The current study focused on the reported behaviour of 8981 female dogs spayed before 520 weeks (ten years) of life for reasons other than behavioural management, and calculated their percentage lifetime exposure to gonadal hormones (PLGH) as a proportion of their age at the time of being reported to the online Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ). We found that 23 behaviours differed between entire …

Assessing Undergraduate Student And Faculty Views On Animal Research: What Do They Know, Whom Do They Trust, And How Much Do They Care?, Eric P. Sandgren, Robert Streiffer, Jennifer Dykema, Nadia Assad, Jackson Moberg

Attitudes Toward Animal Research Collection

Research using animals is controversial. To develop sound public outreach and policy about this issue, we need information about both the underlying science and people’s attitudes and knowledge. To identify attitudes toward this subject at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we developed and administered a survey to undergraduate students and faculty. The survey asked respondents about the importance of, their confidence in their knowledge about, and who they trusted to provide information on animal research. Findings indicated attitudes varied by academic discipline, especially among faculty. Faculty in the biological sciences, particularly those who had participated in an animal research project, reported …

A Global Spatial Analysis Reveals Where Marine Aquaculture Can Benefit Nature And People, Seth J. Theuerkauf, James A. Morris Jr, Tiffany J. Waters, Lisa C. Wickliffe, Heidi K. Alleway

Aquaculture and Fisheries Collection

Aquaculture of bivalve shellfish and seaweed represents a global opportunity to simultaneously advance coastal ecosystem recovery and provide substantive benefits to humanity. To identify marine ecoregions with the greatest potential for development of shellfish and seaweed aquaculture to meet this opportunity, we conducted a global spatial analysis using key environmental (e.g., nutrient pollution status), socioeconomic (e.g., governance quality), and human health factors (e.g., wastewater treatment prevalence). We identify a substantial opportunity for strategic sector development, with the highest opportunity marine ecoregions for shellfish aquaculture centered on Oceania, North America, and portions of Asia, and the highest opportunity for seaweed aquaculture …

A Belmont Report For Animals?, Hope Ferdowsian, L. Syd M. Johnson, Jane Johnson, Andrew Fenton, Adam Shriver, John Gluck

Professional Science Research Ethics Collection

Human and animal research both operate within established standards. In the United States, criticism of the human research environment and recorded abuses of human research subjects served as the impetus for the establishment of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, and the resulting Belmont Report. The Belmont Report established key ethical principles to which human research should adhere: respect for autonomy, obligations to beneficence and justice, and special protections for vulnerable individuals and populations. While current guidelines appropriately aim to protect the individual interests of human participants in research, no similar, comprehensive, …

Adaptation Of The Systematic Review Framework To The Assessment Of Toxicological Test Methods: Challenges And Lessons Learned With The Zebrafish Embryotoxicity Test, Martin L. Stephens, Sevcan Gül Akgün-Ölmez, Sebastian Hoffman, Rob De Vries, Burkhard Flick, Thomas Hartung, Manoj Lalu, Alexandra Maertens, Hilda Witters, Robert Wright, Katya Tsaioun

Toxicology and Animal Models in Research Collection

Systematic review methodology is a means of addressing specific questions through structured, consistent, and transparent examinations of the relevant scientific evidence. This methodology has been used to advantage in clinical medicine, and is being adapted for use in other disciplines. Although some applications to toxicology have been explored, especially for hazard identification, the present preparatory study is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to adapt it to the assessment of toxicological test methods. As our test case, we chose the zebrafish embryotoxicity test (ZET) for developmental toxicity and its mammalian counterpart, the standard mammalian prenatal development toxicity study, focusing the …

Animal Research, Accountability, Openness And Public Engagement: Report From An International Expert Forum, Elisabeth H. Ormandy, Daniel M. Weary, Katarina Cvek, Mark Fisher, Kathrin Herrmann, Pru Hobson-West, Michael Mcdonald, William Milsom, Margaret Rose, Andrew Rowan, Joanne Zurlo, Marina A.G. Von Keyserlingk

Oversight of Animal Experimentation Collection

In November 2013, a group of international experts in animal research policy (n = 11) gathered in Vancouver, Canada, to discuss openness and accountability in animal research. The primary objective was to bring together participants from various jurisdictions (United States, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom) to share practices regarding the governance of animals used in research, testing and education, with emphasis on the governance process followed, the methods of community engagement, and the balance of openness versus confidentiality. During the forum, participants came to a broad consensus on the need for: (a) evidence-based metrics to …

An Epidemiological Study Of Diabetes Mellitus In Dogs Attending First Opinion Practice In The Uk, Madeleine Mattin, Dan G. O'Neill, David B. Church, Paul D. Mcgreevy, Peter C. Thomson, Dave C. Brodbelt

Epidemiology Collection

Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of canine diabetes mellitus (DM) in primarycare clinics in England, to identify risk factors associated with DM and to describe the survival of affected dogs.

Methods: Cases of DM were identified within the electronic patient records of 89 small-animal practices. A nested case-control study identified risk factors for the diagnosis of DM using logistic regression models. Cox proportional hazards models were used to analyse variables associated with survival.

Results: Four-hundred and thirty-nine canine DM cases were identified, giving an apparent prevalence of 0.34% (95% confidence interval 0.31 - 0.37%). Neutered males were at an increased …

A Moral Panic Over Cats, William S. Lynn, Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, Joann Lindenmayer, John Hadidian, Arian D. Wallach, Barbara J. King

Stray and Feral Animal Populations Collection

Some conservationists believe that free-ranging cats pose an enormous risk to biodiversity and public health and therefore should be eliminated from the landscape by any means necessary. They further claim that those who question the science or ethics behind their arguments are science deniers (merchants of doubt) seeking to mislead the public. As much as we share a commitment to conservation of biodiversity and wild nature, we believe these ideas are wrong and fuel an unwarranted moral panic over cats. Those who question the ecological or epidemiological status of cats are not science deniers, and it is a false analogy …

Beyond The 3rs: Expanding The Use Of Human-Relevant Replacement Methods In Biomedical Research, Kathrin Herrmann, Francesca Pistollato, Martin L. Stephens

Biomedical Research and Alternative Methods Collection

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Russell and Burch’s pioneering book, The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique. Their 3Rs framework has helped to inspire humane and scientific progress in experimental technique. However, it is time to update its strategic application. The 21st century has already seen the development of promising, high-tech non-animal models, such as organs-on-a-chip and computational approaches that, in our view, will replace animals as the default option in biomedical experimentation. How fast this transition will take place will depend on the pace at which these new models are optimized to reflect the biology of humans, rather …

Contribution Of Animal Models To Contemporary Understanding Of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Constança Carvalho, Mariana Vieira Crespo, Luísa Ferreira Bastos, Andrew Knight, Luís Vincente

Biomedicine and Animal Models in Research Collection

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a poorly understood neurodevelopmental disorder of multifactorial origin. Animal-based research has been used to investigate ADHD etiology, pathogenesis and treatment, but the efficacy of this research for patients has not yet been systematically evaluated. Such evaluation is important given the resource consumption and ethical concerns incurred by animal use.

We used the citation tracking facility within Web of Science to locate citations of original research papers on animal models related to ADHD published prior to 2010 identified in PubMed by relevant search terms. Human medical papers citing those animal studies were carefully analyzed by …

Goats Distinguish Between Positive And Negative Emotion-Linked Vocalisations, Luigi Baciadonna, Elodie Briefer, Livio Favaro, A. G. Mcelligott

Bioacoustics Collection

Background: Evidence from humans suggests that the expression of emotions can regulate social interactions and promote coordination within a group. Despite its evolutionary importance, social communication of emotions in non-human animals is still not well understood. Here, we combine behavioural and physiological measures, to determine if animals can distinguish between vocalisations linked to different emotional valences (positive and negative). Using a playback paradigm, goats were habituated to listen to a conspecific call associated with positive or negative valence (habituation phase) and were subsequently exposed to a variant of the same call type (contact call) associated with the opposite valence (dishabituation …

Automated Monitoring Of Behaviour In Zebrafish After Invasive Procedures, Anthony G. Deakin, Jonathan Buckley, Hamzah S. Alzu'bi, Andrew R. Cossins, Joseph W. Spencer, Waleed Al'nuaimy, Iain S. Young, Jack S. Thomson, Lynne U. Sneddon

Validation of Animal Experimentation Collection

Fish are used in a variety of experimental contexts often in high numbers. To maintain their welfare and ensure valid results during invasive procedures it is vital that we can detect subtle changes in behaviour that may allow us to intervene to provide pain-relief. Therefore, an automated method, the Fish Behaviour Index (FBI), was devised and used for testing the impact of laboratory procedures and efficacy of analgesic drugs in the model species, the zebrafish. Cameras with tracking software were used to visually track and quantify female zebrafish behaviour in real time after a number of laboratory procedures including fin …

Automated Bioacoustics: Methods In Ecology And Conservation And Their Potential For Animal Welfare Monitoring, Michael P. Mcloughlin, Rebecca Stewart, Alan G. Mcelligott

Conservation Biology and Animal Welfare Collection

Vocalizations carry emotional, physiological and individual information. This suggests that they may serve as potentially useful indicators for inferring animal welfare. At the same time, automated methods for analysing and classifying sound have developed rapidly, particularly in the fields of ecology, conservation and sound scene classification. These methods are already used to automatically classify animal vocalizations, for example, in identifying animal species and estimating numbers of individuals. Despite this potential, they have not yet found widespread application in animal welfare monitoring. In this review, we first discuss current trends in sound analysis for ecology, conservation and sound classification. Following this, …

Is Animal-Based Biomedical Research Being Used In Its Original Context?, Constança Carvalho, Daniel Alves, Andrew Knight, Luís Vicente

Validation of Animal Experimentation Collection

No abstract provided.

Critically Evaluating Animal Research, Andrew Knight

Validation of Animal Experimentation Collection

No abstract provided.

Genetic Modification Of Animals: Scientific And Ethical Issues, Jarrod Bailey

Genetic Engineering and Cloning Collection

No abstract provided.