Putting animal welfare on the map

There is a distinct New Zealand view of the theory and practice of animal welfare, writes JILL GALLOWAY.

Massey University and Australian animal welfare experts gathered for their first meeting to talk through animal welfare issues, putting them on the world animal welfare stage, says Massey's Professor Kevin Stafford

The meeting saw representatives from five research institutions come together to discuss how they could contribute to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), particularly in Oceania and the wider Asian region.

OIE collaborating centres are centres of expertise in a designated sphere of competence relating to the effective management of animal health and welfare.

Massey's Animal Welfare Science and Bioethics Centre was named as an OIE collaborating centre in 2007.

This year, with Massey support, the OIE expanded the collaborating centre to include partner groups at AgResearch, the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in New South Wales.

The centre operates as a partnership between the New Zealand and Australian governments and the research institutions.

Prof Stafford said by working with the other New Zealand and Australian centres, they had presented a united front to the OIE.

"We're well thought of in the sense that our research, legislation and systems are quite modern, and we take animal welfare extremely seriously."

And the history and future of animal welfare is encompassed in a new book co-written by two Massey University researchers involved in the centre.

The Sciences of Animal Welfare is the latest in a series on animal welfare sponsored by the Universities Federation of Animal Welfare.

It is written by the co-directors of the Animal Welfare Science and Bioethics Centre, David Mellor and Prof Stafford, with Emily Patterson-Kane, a New Zealand animal welfare scientist from the American Veterinary Medical Association.

The book provides distinct New Zealand perspectives on the theory and practice of animal welfare science set in a global context.

Prof Mellor said the book gave credit to the agricultural, veterinary and genetic sciences that had contributed to improving animal welfare over the years.

He said agricultural sciences and veterinary sciences had made major contributions to animal welfare before people even started thinking about it: "Through things like forage management, the storage of feeds for the months when they're in scarce supply, dealing with soil deficiencies and the animals ending up with deficiency diseases, as well as veterinary advances that have led to 61 vaccines that are used world-wide, they have all improved the health and wellbeing of animals."

He said the book gives the most up-to-date thinking on animal welfare "in terms of the health, nutrition, environment, behavioural and mental needs of animals and how they can be met, assessed and managed".

Prof Stafford said veterinarians were now better able to assess the whole needs of animals.

"Traditionally, veterinary science has been interested in health and disease and surgery.

"It is a much more holistic business we're in now.

"We're interested in genetics, nutrition, behaviour and animal welfare.

"Much more holistic than we were in the 1970s."

New Zealand traded on its image as an exporter that produced its primary products with the utmost respect to the environment and the animal.

"So it's important that we lead research into the welfare of animals," Prof Stafford said.

Prof Mellor said the book would appeal to both animal science students and those studying ethics in humanities.

"Students, scientists, regulators and non-governmental organisations can all get something out of it.

"The book doesn't limit itself to strictly the science of animal welfare, but explores the social contexts of it as well."

- © Fairfax NZ News