Animal welfare involves three overlapping areas of concern (from Fraser et al., 1997); biological function, affective (emotional) state, and natural living. In discussions with animal scientists and ethologists, veterinarians are often blamed for emphasizing health (biological function) over and above the other two issues, sometimes to the point of ignoring them. This is not really surprising given our training and focus and while I believe that the health of the animal is extremely important, I don’t think we can ignore the other two issues.

To my mind, well-being is a useful term that encompasses both health and welfare – including ‘happiness’ which implies some comprehension of emotion. In the U.S., it has become the ‘safe’ word to use, because for some reason here, in contrast to other countries, the use of the word welfare carries with it the negative connotation of the welfare state – even though the definitions of well-being and welfare both include the concept of financial good fortune and prosperity (which probably don’t apply to the average bovine!). There is also the issue that in the U.S., the term welfare seems to have been hijacked by the animal activist organizations like HSUS and PETA. However, the word welfare is a strong word that appears in the oath that every veterinarian states on entering the profession, so I think it’s high time that we win back use of the word and use it in combination with health to address the core of our business caring for livestock.

The Board in its wisdom will likely settle on using both terms – one in the mission statement to separate welfare and health, and well-being in the vision statement to compress those two concepts into one term. We’ll release the final wording shortly, once we have taken our final vote for approval and I think you’ll like what we’ve come up with. I think it’s a testament to how well the members of the Board work with each other that many perspectives were shared and debated openly to improve the final product.

Finally, this month I have been engaged in conversations with multiple organizations on the topic of animal welfare audits. AABP has been involved in a revision of the NMPF DairyFARM Animal Care Manual that will likely be released later this year, and several entities are looking to adopt audits that focus more on animal welfare outcomes and less on process control. That is to say, if we assess calf health or an objective test for failure of passive immunity transfer and the herd passes, why should we bother asking lots of detailed questions related to the volume and timing of colostrum delivery? This has been a trend in auditing programs in other countries over the last few years and one that I fully support. If the outcome is good for the animal, why should we concern ourselves with the myriad of different ways farmers achieve success in their beef and dairy herds? I think it is likely that we will see a shift in auditing approaches over the next few years that will help streamline the delivery of these programs and more objectively rank herds by their ability to achieve high standards of welfare.

Clearly the topic of animal welfare/well-being isn’t going away anytime soon, and I think it is our responsibility to continue to prioritize advocacy on behalf of the cow in discussions with our clients – whichever term you prefer to use!

Cheers,
Nigel

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