Exploring Animal Sentience for World Animal Day
World Animal Day falls on 4th October each year
and its purpose is to improve animal welfare standards around the globe,
through celebrating the lives of animals. The mission of World Animal Day is to
make the world a better place for animals, which fits very well with the
JMICAWE mission and aims. Every two years, with our partner SRUC, JMICAWE have
been involved in helping to organise an event around this date, to celebrate
animal welfare. This year, we also linked up with our BioResearch vets to cover
animals used in science as well as other animals. As our theme this year we
focused on ‘Animal sentience and emotions’ and why that is so important in our
thinking about animal welfare. We were delighted to be able to welcome 200
staff and students from local campuses to the event.
We began with a morning of talks from researchers from SRUC,
the French research institute (INRA) and University of Newcastle. Our first
speaker, Professor Francoise Wemelsfelder from SRUC, reminded us about animal
ethics and why sentience and emotions should be at the forefront of our
thinking and assessments of animal welfare. Next Professor Marie Haskell (SRUC)
showed us the fascinating abilities of farm animals to recognise emotions in
faces, and why faces are so important for animals.
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| Professor Marie Haskell (SRUC) defines emotions |
We then had a series of
presentations on positive emotions in animals – such as play, positive
engagement, contentment and use of enrichment. Dr Belinda Vigors shared the
outcomes of some of her work in exploring these concepts with farmers, and it
was great to see how important farmers felt these positive emotions were to the
lives of farmed animals. Professor Alistair Lawrence then expanded on the theme
of positive animal welfare, including showing a wonderful video of rats
engaging in hide-and-seek play with researchers – what a great thing to be able
to call work! A visiting researcher, Dr Vincent Bombail from INRA, then
continued this theme with a talk about tickling rats and assessing their vocal
responses. Finally our morning programme ended with a talk by Dr Matt Leach of
Newcastle University about the very important emotion of pain and how it can be
recognised in animals.
As is becoming a tradition with these events we had a long
lunch break to allow delegates to network and find out more about animal
welfare research including the use of 3D video imaging to detect animal
behaviour on farm, training tools for farmers on body condition scoring of
cows, and a peek at the new large animal imagining facility, including MRI. For
the afternoon we had a really interesting talk from about the use of animals in
science from Elliott Lilley of RSPCA and concluded with a panel discussion on
animal sentience and how that might affect use of animals in science.
Overall the feedback on the event was very positive, and we
look forward to organising the next one in 2021!
Former Director of the JMICAWE, Prof Nat
Waran was invited to present on One Welfare at the recent OIE (World Animal
Health) Regional Animal Welfare meeting in Bali, hosted by the Indonesian
Government. The meeting attended by more than 25 National Animal Welfare Focal
Point representatives from across a very large region was a great opportunity
to provide information about the importance of linking improved animal welfare
with positive human health and welfare outcomes using examples drawn from the
work carried out by the JMICAWE and partners in different parts of the world. Discussions
on the development and implementation of the OIE animal welfare codes and
standards as well as support for the development of in-country animal welfare
strategies took place over a three day period, and the complexity of driving
forward changes to improve animal welfare across the region was made obvious to
all. 
