Kevin Stafford, a veterinarian and specialist in animal welfare at Massey University, says the two groups appear to be on a collision course. Animal welfare activists appear to want pigs and hens outside, while the environmentalists are concerned about the impact of animal waste on free-draining soils.
Stafford says one of the challenges facing the pig industry is animal welfare. The European Union has just published the findings of a major study of animal welfare, which includes introducing the concept that animals should be kept in a ‘positive emotional state’ and ‘experience pleasure’. He has difficulty measuring what ‘happiness’ might mean to animals.
“I think you can look at a group of animals that are well-fed, in a comfortable situation, in a correct social group and say – ‘well they look happy’. They are not aggressive to one another, they are relaxed looking, but beyond making that sort of general observation I am not sure we can do very much.”
According to Stafford, scientists must deal with many issues like malnutrition, disease, physical discomfort, limited behavioural opportunities, pain and fear. A lot of work has been done by animal scientists on those topics for 30 to 40 years.
“In terms of fear, the concept of having freedom from fear is not what we are talking about. The concept is about limiting the amount of fear. We know in the pig industry if you reduce the amount of chronic fear that pigs experience, their productivity increases by 7-10%, a massive increase.
“In the dairy industry, if the cows are unfraid, comfortable and happy you’ll probably increase productivity by 3 to 5%.”
Stafford says people want to see animals exhibit ‘normal behaviour’, but this is an ‘interesting’ concept.
“Normal means everything and normal means nothing. What we are talking about when we say the normal behaviour is what society says is acceptable behaviour – not what is biological normal or natural. For animals to live what the EU are calling a ‘positive emotional experience’ I think that is more difficult. In fact, I am not too sure what it’s about.”
Stafford says New Zealand has a very high standard of animal welfare by international standards.
