The current review seeks to highlight the concerns that have been raised on pre-slaughter stress, contributing factors and its consequent effects on cattle behavioural responses and the quality of beef; inter-linking the activities involved from birth to slaughter. Such information is crucial in light of the consumer concerns on overall animal welfare, quality of meat and food security. Slaught...

Seven types of evidence are reviewed that indicate that high subjective wellbeing (such as life satisfaction, absence of negative emotions, optimism, and positive emotions) causes better health and longevity. For example, prospective longitudinal studies of normal populations provide evidence that various types of subjective well-being such as positive affect predict health and longevity, contr...

HPA axis activity is often measured by corticosteroid release as a means to evaluate stress and well-being in animals. While the analysis of corticosteroid levels can provide useful information in some circumstances, a variety of methodological and technical problems make them difficult to accurately interpret. Furthermore, there is considerable evidence that is inconsistent with the widespread...

Veterinary medicine is an ethically challenging profession, but the ethical reasoning abilities of practising veterinarians in the UK have never been formally assessed. This study investigated moral reasoning ability in 65 qualified veterinarians (38 practising and 27 academic) and 33 members of the public in the UK using the Defining Issues Test. Academic veterinarians had higher scores than m...

The changing role of companion animals, accompanied by changes in human lifestyle and demands, places them at risk of poor welfare. They are increasingly subjected to stressors that prevent the adequate expression of normal behaviour. Fear and anxiety often go unrecognised, leading to behavioural disorders that are accompanied by negative affective states and poor welfare. Irresponsible breedin...

Recently, conventional housing of laboratory rodents has been criticised for inducing abnormal behaviours and poor well-being, which also questions the validity of many animal experiments. Environmental enrichment may prevent abnormal behaviours and improve animal wellbeing, but concerns have been raised that it might also disrupt standardisation, thereby reducing the precision and replicabilit...

Recent developments in the study of animal cognition and emotion have resulted in the 'judgement bias' model of animal welfare. Judgement biases describe the way in which changes in affective state are characterized by changes in information processing. In humans, anxiety and depression are characterized by increased expectation of negative events and negative interpretation of ambiguous inform...

U.S. federal regulations and standards governing the care and use of research animals enacted in the mid- to late 1980s, while having positive effects on the welfare and quality of the animals, have resulted in dramatic increases in overall research costs. In addition to the expenses of housing and caring for animals according to the standards, establishing the requisite internal compliance bur...

Fish welfare issues are increasingly appearing on social and political agendas and have recently gained prominence in fisheries literature. By focusing on examples from recreational fishing, this paper challenges some of the previous accounts of fish welfare. Issues of concern encompass: (1) the feelings-based approach to fish welfare; (2) the artificial divide between human beings and nature; ...

The key to optimal animal production is a balanced gut. Performance pressure renders broilers vulnerable to infectious and/or non-infectious triggers. With the European withdrawal of antimicrobial growth promoters (AGP) in 2006, enteric broiler diseases became more prevalent in the EU. A common syndrome causing intestinal health aberrance is called ‘dysbiosis’ or ‘dysbacteriosis’ [1]. This cond...