Animal welfare essay

The first 200 words of this essay...

Assessment number A11029

Animal Welfare.

Animal welfare is the viewpoint that animals should not suffer unnecessarily, and basic needs should be met. Suffering and satisfaction of an animal cannot be measured directly, but the consequences of various causes of suffering and satisfaction can be compared in numerous ways. For example welfare scientists discovered that it's more physiologically stressful for a lamb to have its tail docked with a knife than with a rubber ring (Lester, Mellor, Holmes, Ward, Stafford 1996).

There are three components of animal welfare. Welfare science considers human effects on animals from the animals' point of view. Ethics concerns human actions towards animals. Legalisation considers treatment of animals from humans. There are three concepts of animal welfare. Physical status (fitness) suggests that when physiological systems cause survival or reproduction to be impaired, an animal has a poor state of welfare. An experiment on pregnant pigs in individual cage-stalls was carried out. The experiment showed the design of cage-stalls could affect the welfare of pigs. Pigs housed in stalls comprised of horizontal bars showed evidence of a chronic stress response of an enormity sufficient to adversely affect welfare, and active avoidance by neighbouring.