Animal health and animal welfare – is it the same thing?

Animal health and animal welfare – is it the same thing?

Animal health legislation and standards Animal health legislation has a long history. We could even talk about administrative traditions, which have had an important impact on international trade. Nationally, within the EU and internationally, the legislation and the standards concerning infectious animal diseases have developed a lot during the last decades. This development has been based on ...

What is Animal Welfare and How is it Assessed?

The Economics of Animal Health and Welfare

Introduction There are many definitions of the term ‘animal welfare’ (Swanson, 1995; Spedding, 2000). For instance: “welfare is normally defined as a state of well-being, in which at least basic needs are met and suffering is minimized” (Spedding, 2000, p.9). This is a simplistic definition, which deals mainly with an animal’s physical needs and implies that suffering can only be minimised. Thi...

The use of animal - based health and welfare parameters – what is it all about ?

Organic farming is characterized by several goals that are expressed in daily practices and in standards. Some of the important goals for organic production systems are naturalness, harmony on all levels of production, local recycling of resources, and the principle of precaution (Anonymous, 2002). For organic herds, good animal welfare is an explicit goal, and this includes that the overall go...

Transgenesis in Animal Agriculture: Addressing Animal Health and Welfare Concerns

The US Food and Drug Administration’s final Guidance for Industry on the regulation of transgenesis in animal agriculture has paved the way for the commercialization of genetically engineered (GE) farm animals. The productionrelated diseases associated with extant breeding technologies are reviewed, as well as the predictable welfare consequences of continued emphasis on prolificacy at the pote...