Minister of Rural Affairs Visit

Scientific Evidence to support Policy Changes

Scientists from SRUC and JMICAWE were delighted to host a visit from the Scottish Government’s Minister for Rural Affairs and the Natural Environment, MSP Mairi Gougeon on 10th September. 

The Minister has responsibility for animal welfare in Scotland, and was keen to learn more about the research in animal welfare being conducted in Edinburgh. We visited the SRUC pig research centre, where more than 30 years of research into pig behaviour and welfare has been carried out. SRUC’s Prof Alistair Lawrence explained the history of pig research from the Edinburgh pig park in the 1980s, which allowed pigs to show natural behaviour in a wood on the Pentland hills, and demonstrated that pigs were still motivated to perform the same behaviours as their wild ancestors. The story continued through a programme of work to unravel the behavioural needs of sows and piglets, culminating in the designed pen for sows and piglets, PigSAFE, which allows sows the freedom to nest-build, move around the environment and interact freely with their piglets (see www.freefarrowing.org). We also discussed other ongoing pig research, such as work on preventing tail-biting, and a project to recognise emotional expression through facial recognition technology that may be able to detect happiness from the expressions in pigs faces.

Finally, we discussed work in other species, such as the development of Qualitative Behavioural Assessment in many species by Prof Francoise Wemelsfelder, and the impact of early life experience in pigs, cattle, sheep and goats. Before leaving the Minister spent time discussing the work of JMICAWE at home and abroad with Prof Cathy Dwyer.  Overall, it was great to be able to showcase the important evidence-gathering work that we do as part of our research, and look forward to many more interactions and opportunities to contribute to improving policy for high animal welfare in farmed animals.