Letters in Animal Welfare and Ethics (CABI Concise) – serie

Over the past 60 years, our understanding of the livestock animals under our care, and our subsequent treatment of them, has progressed from the days of Ruth Harrison's Animal Machines, a time when farmed chickens were excluded from legal protections created for birds. This book takes us through the introduction of considerations of sentience, the ethical matrix and animal autonomy, the Five Freedoms, welfare quality assurance schemes on farms, and our current concerns of the sustainability of the animal agriculture industry. Combining and reflecting on the earlier works of John Webster, an established animal welfare expert who coined the Five Freedoms concept, this book reinspects the extended journey of animal welfare science.

Over the past sixty years, our understanding of the livestock animals under our care, and our subsequent treatment of them, has progressed. From the days of Ruth Harrison's Animal Machines, when farmed chickens were excluded from legal protections created for birds, this book takes us through the introduction of considerations of sentience, the ethical matrix and animal autonomy, the Five Freedoms, welfare quality assurance schemes on farms, and our current concerns of the sustainability of the animal agriculture industry. Combining and reflecting on the earlier works of John Webster, an established animal welfare expert who coined the Five Freedoms concept, this book reinspects the extended journey of animal welfare science.

Animal welfare science has expanded substantially over the last few decades. Historically a fringe concern, the welfare of the animals in our care is now a key consideration for owners, agricultural industry workers and consumers alike. Sharing lessons learned from animal welfare and human psychological research for better results across the species divide isn't necessarily a new idea. But over the last twenty-five years, how have attitudes to welfare and mental disorders changed in human medicine and psychiatry, and in studies of farmed, companion, laboratory and wild animals? How have research methodologies developed? Essentially, where have we got to now? In this book, the world's first professor of animal welfare, Don Broom, reflects on shared insights of how all species can better cope with challenges, from stress to pain.