Ethical question of the month — September 2015

[摘要] In assessing animal welfare, the livestock industry often refers to production values as indicators of welfare. Other groups prefer to measure welfare based on the affective state of the animal, i.e. contentment, freedom from pain, etc. and the ability to perform natural behaviors. Do incremental increases or decreases in production values such as kilograms of milk or grams of gain represent actual changes in the welfare status of livestock or should changes in productivity be what welfare improvements are measured against? Can incremental changes in productivity truly represent changes in the welfare of an animal without a concomitant improvement in the animal’s affective state or behavior?

[学科分类] 兽医学