Schneidewind, S. J., Meemken, D., Langforth, S. 2023. Measures and penalties for animal welfare violations at german abattoirs: A compilation of current recommendations and practices. Animals 13(18), 2916.
Protecting animal welfare during preslaughter handling and slaughter is an important ethical concern with growing importance to consumers. However, animal welfare violations in abattoirs remain a serious problem, and the enforcement of relevant laws and...
Olczak, K., Penar, W., Nowicki, J. et al. 2023. The role of sound in livestock farming—Selected aspects. Animals 13(14), 2307.
To ensure the optimal living conditions of farm animals, it is essential to understand how their senses work and the way in which they perceive their environment. Most animals have a different hearing range compared...
Nawroth, C., Gygax, L. 2020. The legislative, ethical, and conceptual importance of replicability in farm animal welfare science. agriRxiv 2020, 20203211980.
In this commentary, we discuss three replicability issues that are specifically relevant to research regarding farm animal welfare: (1) Legislative action, and its potential economic consequences, should derive from robust and replicable research to benefit...
Manenti, I., Viola, I., Ala, U. et al. 2023. Adaptation response in sheep: Ewes in different cortisol clusters reveal changes in the expression of salivary mirnas. Animals 13(20), 3273.
Farm procedures have an impact on animal welfare by activating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis that induces a wide array of physiological responses. This adaptive system guarantees that the animal copes with environmental variations and it induces...
Goma, A. A., Uddin, J., Kieson, E. 2023. Lateralised behavioural responses in livestock to environmental stressors: Implications for using infrared thermography to assess welfare conditions. Animals 13(23), 3663.
Lateralised behavioural responses to environmental stressors have become more frequently used as indicators of social welfare in animals. These lateralised behavioural responses are under the control of asymmetrical brain functions as part of the primary...
Crawford, P. E., Hamer, K., Lovatt, F. et al. 2023. Improving analgesia provision for sheep: An analysis of farm medicine records and attitudes towards pain relief on sheep farms in Northern Ireland. Veterinary Record Open 10(2), e75.
Background Management of pain is critical to improve the welfare of farmed livestock and meet consumer expectations. There is limited published information about the use of analgesic drugs in the sheep sector. Methods A mixed-method...
Costantino, A., Fabrizio, E., Calvet, S. 2021. The role of climate control in monogastric animal farming: The effects on animal welfare, air emissions, productivity, health, and energy use. Applied Sciences 11(20), 9549.
In the last decades, an engineering process has deeply transformed livestock houses by introducing fine-tuned climate control systems to guarantee adequate indoor climate conditions needed to express the maximum genetic potential of animals and to...
Barnard, S., Matthews, L., Messori, S. et al. 2016. Laterality as an indicator of emotional stress in ewes and lambs during a separation test. Animal Cognition 19(1), 207–214.
We assessed motor laterality in sheep to explore species-specific brain hemi-field dominance and how this could be affected by genetic or developmental factors. Further, we investigated whether directionality and strength of laterality could be linked...
Špinka, M. 2019. Animal agency, animal awareness and animal welfare. Animal Welfare 28(1), 11–20.
In nature, animals need to actively engage with the environment in order to prosper in survival and reproduction. Hence, agency is a central adaptive characteristic of animal life. In this paper, I propose that from...