World Horse Welfare Conference - 'The Horse-Human Partnership - What's in it for the Horse?'

Education identified as the most important factor in improving the horse-human partnership

As we cope with the global pandemic, it is becoming ever more common to attend conferences and meeting without leaving home. Last week JMICAWE Director, Cathy Dwyer, attended the first entirely virtual annual conference of World Horse Welfare, focused on the theme of the ‘The Horse-Human Partnership – What’s in it for the Horse?’ from her own desk, and supplying her own coffee and biscuits! The conference made great use of the opportunities provided by the virtual environment and opened with a poll asking participants to choose which issue they considered the most lacking in horse welfare. Overwhelmingly (58%) of participants chose mental wellbeing as the key issue, with a good (humane) death a distant second with 18% of votes. It was heartening to see the complete acceptance of animal mental state, and a movement away from only considering physical welfare, being so clearly expressed by participants.

The conference dealt with the main topic by considering the welfare and interests of horses as leisure animals, working animals and engaged in sport (racehorses), as well as considering the benefits that humans can get from positive interactions with horses. Madeleine Campbell, from the Royal Veterinary College, gave a comprehensive overview of recent research focusing on the expression of emotions in horses, and how this can help to improve our understanding of what the horse might be experiencing in our interactions with them. Peter Thornber, from the Commonwealth Veterinary Association, then gave a thought-provoking talk, which discussed the complex and often dependent relationships between working equids and the families that rely on them for their livelihoods, and the work of International Coalition for Working Equids to help improve the welfare of both equids and humans. Across the globe, the horse and other equids play varied but important roles in human lives, and have done so for many thousands of years, and we are now starting to consider the horse-human relationship from both sides of the partnership.

The Conference included a number of polls and discussion topics, and it was clear that concepts of the modern horse-human partnership has moved on from the idea that a leisure horse needs a ‘job or purpose’. The role of the horse as a companion, a means of improving owner mental well-being, and with interests in its own quality of life, was supported by nearly all participants and panellists. The Conference wrapped up with a poll asking what one word might improve the horse-human partnership from the perspective of the horse. In agreement with the remit of JMICAWE, Education came out as the most important factor, with empathy, respect, compassion and understanding also considered very important issues.

The whole conference is available to watch as a recording for those interested in learning more here: https://www.worldhorsewelfare.org/about-us/our-organisation/our-conference

JMICAWE's Hayley Walters is guest speaker at Veterinary Nursing Evening

Veterinary nurse (VN) Hayley Walters spoke at The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ virtual ‘Veterinary Nursing Evening’ this week. During the evening, over 70 newly registered VNs were formally welcomed to the register; and the achievements of several nurses who have completed their Advanced Diploma were recognised.

It is the second year running Hayley has been a special guest speaker at this very happy event. Last year it was held at London Zoo where Hayley talked about her career as a veterinary nurse and how the qualification led her to work with moon bears in China and Vietnam, street dogs in Bosnia and teach in vet schools in India and Sri Lanka. 

This year Hayley gave the talk from her home in Nottingham and focused on the challenges of working in low to middle income countries, and why they exist for the veterinary profession.

“Working in developing countries, once I’d qualified as a veterinary nurse, was something I’d always wanted to do, and I have had amazing experiences whilst doing it. It is something I would recommend to any VN who has a passion for combining their job with travelling. It is an exciting thing to do with your life, but it is also a productive way of helping animals who are less fortunate than our UK pets. However, it can also be upsetting to see some of the welfare challenges that exist so this talk was to highlight a few of the difficulties, why they exist and what to do when you are faced with them.”

Hayley will receive a donation for her chosen charity ‘DogStar Foundation’ in Sri Lanka as a thank you for her time.

Congratulations to our PhD candidate Lisa Qing Yang!

The JMICAWE team congratulate our new PhD candidate, Lisa Qing Yang for completing her master’s degree in International Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law at University of Edinburgh and receiving the prize for the highest grade in her cohort for her MSc Dissertation.

Lisa’s master’s thesis aimed to explore what the opportunities and barriers were for Chinese egg producers to improve farm animal welfare by adopting higher welfare production systems. China has been the world’s largest egg producer for decades yet most of the farms still use conventional cages for egg production. With a greater awareness of animal welfare developing in Chinese society, alternative production systems are now being considered. It was this study that interested Lisa to further pursue her PhD on the same topic, with aims to develop strategies that can facilitate Chinese egg producers to change to cage free systems. 

Lisa was pleased to see the project has received positive outcome, she said:

“I believe producers are an indispensable part of the discussion of farm animal welfare improvement. I am pleased to see my thesis received a good grade. More importantly, it lays the foundation of understanding how Chinese egg producers perceive animal welfare and what challenges need to be addressed to help them improve animal welfare. I am very happy that my PhD research will continue to explore a solution-based approach. I hope the findings will support Chinese producers to make the change happen”.

We are very proud of what Lisa has achieved with regards to improving farm animal welfare in China, and look forward to see how this work progresses as part of her PhD studies with us. Well done Lisa!

Virtual Meeting of the EU Platform on Animal Welfare

 JMICAWE Director, Cathy Dwyer, attended another virtual meeting of the EU Platform on Animal Welfare this week, in her role as one of the independent experts. This is the second virtual meeting of the Platform, but the 8th meeting overall since the Platform was set up in 2017. The whole platform is keen to be able to meet again in person in Brussels perhaps for the next meeting in June 2021.

The platform provides a regular update on the animal welfare activities of the EU and is a forum for discussion and networking between government vets, academics, industry representatives and animal welfare NGOs. The meeting began with a short address from the Commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, who re-affirmed her commitment to improving standards of animal welfare in the EU through reviewing the existing legislation and improving enforcement. A key part of this work is consideration of the option to develop an EU-wide animal welfare food label, and a sub-group of the Platform has been set up to look at how this might work.

A new development in the EU has been a European Citizens Initiative campaign, ‘End the Cage Age’ (www.endthecageage.eu), led by Compassion in World Farming, which calls for a ban in the use of cages for the housing of laying hens, rabbits, pigs and dairy calves by 2027. The campaign has received more than 1.4 million verified signatures of support across the EU, so ensuring a public hearing and response from the Commission. Although some EU countries have already banned some cages, there are still many millions of animals spending some or all their lives in cages in commercial production in the EU, and this is the most common housing c
ondition for pigs, rabbits and poultry around the world. However, the research has clearly shown that such close confinement results in high levels of stress and poor welfare.

Also presented at the meeting was the work of two other sub-groups of the platform working on welfare issues in horses and donkeys and the welfare of dogs and cats kept for trade. Each of these sub-groups are developing guidelines and factsheets to help improve the welfare of these species. The guidelines to good animal welfare practice for the keeping, care, training and use of horses have been developed and 7 factsheets have also been produced on infectious disease and biosecurity, feed, water, hoof care, social interactions and comfort behaviours, stables-indoor housing, turnout – shelter and pasture. Infographics and leaflets on selling and buying dogs have also been produced. These materials can be accessed from the Platform conclusions site of the European Commission website (https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/welfare/eu-platform-animal-welfare/platform_conclusions_en)

Overall, the meeting was very positive and demonstrated the commitment of the Commission to animal welfare improvements in the EU, and to supporting farmers and consumers in developing and accessing higher welfare products.

Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies wins global animal welfare award!

The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies and JMICAWE are delighted to announce that we are the very first recipients of the World Veterinary Association and CEVA veterinary school of the year in the global animal welfare awards for 2020. The WVA and CEVA give annual awards for those in the veterinary profession who have gone above and beyond in animal welfare, and JMICAWE’s very own Heather Bacon and Hayley Walters have been former winners of individual awards. For the first time in 2019 WVA and CEVA also decided to give an award to the veterinary school or college that was working to promote animal welfare, and we won! 

The award is wonderful recognition of the hard work, dedication and commitment of all those in JMICAWE, the wider JMICAWE ‘family’, including our colleagues at SRUC who conduct research in animal welfare, and many, many people in the R(D)SVS who contribute to embedding animal welfare into the veterinary curriculum to give our students the best possible grounding in animal welfare science, ethics and practice. In addition, the award recognises the significant outreach work that JMICAWE and others do to reach out to other veterinary schools globally, and help to promote animal welfare education for all veterinary students.

Edinburgh has a long history of involvement in animal welfare research and teaching. The R(D)SVS was instrumental in setting up the Society for Veterinary Ethology in 1966, which has grown and expanded over the last 50+ years to become the International Society for Applied Ethology, the pre-eminent scientific society for the study of animal welfare science. Edinburgh was also home to the first MSc programme in the world to offer postgraduate education in applied animal behaviour and animal welfare in 1990. The MSc is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and now has a network of alumni working to improve animal welfare all over the world.

With the current pandemic we were unable to collect our award in person at the 36th WVA Conference in Auckland, New Zealand in April as planned. However, a virtual awards ceremony was held last week and can be seen by following this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OhtWyYvGkw 

This also meant that we did not get the opportunity to meet and congratulate the other award winners in person but we are honoured to share the awards ceremony with Prof Paul McGreevy, Paul Oluwadare, Prof Gareth Bath, Maya Cygariska and Dr Tharanga Thoradeniya – many congratulations to you all for your work in improving the lives of animals.

BVNA Guest Lecture - Hayley Walters

Last week, veterinary nurse Hayley Walters delivered a virtual, special guest speaker presentation for British Veterinary Nursing Association (BVNA) from the comfort of her spare bedroom! Originally intended to be a live event in Telford, the three days of lectures changed to online due to COVID-19.

Hayley was invited to give an inspirational talk about her career and highlight just how many opportunities are available now to registered veterinary nurses (RVNs). Hayley’s vocation has taken her from cows and sheep in the Peak District in England to moon bears and meat dogs in China, to teaching in vet schools in developing countries to receiving an MBE at Buckingham palace.

 

Hayley said, 

“The veterinary nursing profession still has a long way to go to receive the same recognition as human nursing but our profession has not been around for nearly as long. Even after 21 years as a RVN, I am still very proud to be one. It was an honour to be asked to speak at BVNA about the prospects that we have and the difference a well trained RVN can make to an animal’s experience and welfare when in the clinic.”

 

Hayley also revealed the advice she would give her younger self starting out as a young RVN which included being better informed in dog and cat behaviour and recognising pain in patients post-surgery. 

Hayley encouraged all student and registered veterinary nurses to enrol on The University of Edinburgh’s free online MOOC in dog and cat behaviour if they wanted to improve their knowledge in this area.  https://www.coursera.org/learn/cats-and-dogs

 

BVNA Scientific Poster Competition Winner!

Congratulations to Emma Hogarth (née Campbell) who was the winner of the BVNA Research Bites Award 2020 for the Best Scientific Poster at the recent virtual BVNA Congress!!

Emma Campbell BSc(Hons)RVN MScCAB graduated from the online MSc Clinical Animal Behaviour in 2019 and since then has gone onto publish her work in The Veterinary Nurse Journal (Campbell et al 2020). Most recently Emma presented a poster titled, "From handling fails to waggy tails! Communication between canine owners and veterinary staff on canine handling intolerances in practice", at the virtual British Veterinary Nursing Association Congress which took place from 9-11th October. 

Following the disappointment of being unable to present her poster in person, Emma was delighted to be awarded the BVNA Research Bites Award 2020 for the Best Scientific Poster: 

"I was extremely grateful to get the opportunity to present at the BVNA Congress and it was such a surprise to win the Best Poster Award. I'm so pleased my research has been presented to the veterinary community and hope my results will help practices think about the way they approach patients with handling intolerances."

We are very proud of what Emma has achieved within the field of veterinary behaviour and wish her all the best for the future.

Campbell, E., Connor, M. and Buckley, L.A., 2020. A prospective cross-sectional survey of UK-based dog owners to explore canine handling intolerances and owner willingness to disclose these to veterinary professionals. The Veterinary Nurse, 11(2), pp.96-102.

EAZA annual conference plenary on zoo animal welfare assessment

The recent European Association of Zoos and Aquaria online annual conference was an enormous success, bringing together participants from all around the world to further develop the role of zoos and aquaria in conservation and animal welfare. 

JMICAWE’s Heather Bacon was delighted to deliver a plenary presentation on welfare assessment in aging zoo animals, and a more comprehensive version of this presentation will be delivered in November as a webinar. The plenary session was attended by 689 participants and was the most attended session of the conference, highlighting the enthusiasm within the zoo community to engage in zoo animal welfare.

Plenary presentations may be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U82GfqCqg4

JMICAWE presents at the European college of Animal welfare symposium

 

The JMICAWE team were delighted to contribute to the recent European College of Animal Welfare and Behavioural Medicine (ECAWBM) symposium on animal welfare. Previous JMICAWE director, Professor Natalie Waran, opened the symposium with a presentation on One welfare and the importance of human-horse interaction to both human and equine welfare.

This was followed by presentations on a range of topics from various European college residents including JMICAWE’s Heather Bacon, who presented her work on canine pain assessment. 

The European College of Animal Welfare and Behavioural Medicine (ECAWBM) strives to provide animal owners and their veterinarians with European Veterinary Specialists; veterinarians specialised in animal welfare and/or behavioural medicine. 

Diplomats are qualified veterinarians who have undergone
an extensive, well-defined training programme over many years within the fields of animal welfare and behavioural medicine before passing a demanding board examination. This assures high quality service to the general animal owning public and to referring veterinarians.

http://www.ecawbm.com/

 

JMICAWE Release of Vet Nursing Skills Resource!

A free online resource has been launched by the University of Edinburgh to mark Veterinary Nurses Day on Friday the 9th October.

Veterinary Nursing Skills provides vital insights into the principles and practice of nursing dogs and cats in a clinic setting. Content is provided by the Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education (JMICAWE) at the University’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.

The new resource, which is aimed at qualified and student veterinary nurses, will provide fresh perspectives on the interactions between nursing care, animal health and patient behaviour. Its content – also a valuable teaching tool for vet nursing lecturers – will highlight how focusing on these vital overlaps can improve patient welfare and clinical outcomes. Vet technicians and veterinary assistants are also expected to benefit from the new material, which includes video tutorials, downloadable fact sheets and interactive quizzes. Topics covered include clinical skills, patient handling and behaviour, wound management and bandaging, animal welfare and inpatient care. Registration is free via the University website. 

Demand for the resource has never been greater. There are some 15,000 registered veterinary nurses in the UK alone and an estimated 400 million cats and 500 million dogs worldwide. The Royal (Dick) School’s Welfare and Anaesthesia Nurse Hayley Walters, who teaches final year vet students, said the role of the veterinary nurse is being increasingly recognised. Ms Walters said the module was an attempt to address the fact that not all para-veterinary professionals have access to the same professional training resources.

This new resource aims to support vet nurses in providing the best clinical care and welfare for their patients no matter where in the world they work.

Knowledge and compassionate veterinary nurses improve patient welfare, so we want to share some of our educational and animal welfare expertise with a global audience, this new resource will help to promote the role of the veterinary nurse as a para-professional who is an essential part of the veterinary team.

Hayley WaltersJMICAWE Welfare and Anaesthesia Nurse

New member of staff joins the JMICAWE family

JMICAWE is delighted to welcome Miguel Somarriba Soley to the team! Miguel will be joining the MSc International Animal Welfare Ethics and Law programme team to help with programme co-ordination, and will also work with JMICAWE in its animal welfare training project in China. Miguel brings a wealth of varied expertise to the team. He is a veterinarian who qualified in his native Costa Rica, and has worked for the WSPA (now World Animal Protection) in their Animals in Disasters Programme, taking part in disaster management and recovery projects in Latin-American and the Caribbean following natural disasters. He has also worked with organizations providing free veterinary care in rural and indigenous communities in Central America.
 
Miguel moved to Edinburgh to take the MSc in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare, and then joined the SRUC Animal Behaviour and Welfare Research team, firstly as a research assistant and then to conduct his PhD research. Miguel has many and varied interests: his PhD focused on stress in beef cattle and its effects on the microbiome, feed efficiency and methane emissions. In the past he has worked on animal welfare research in domestic species, and has been involved in service dog training, captive animal enrichment and training, animal management during natural disaster situations, behavioural medicine and veterinary private practice. Miguel is also a provisional member of the APBC, working towards full certification in clinical animal behaviour.

Miguel says: ‘I am very excited about joining JMICAWE. I feel genuinely proud to take part in the great work done by JMICAWE to improve animal welfare around the world through education, training and influencing legislation. I appreciate the opportunity, and I will strive to have a positive effect on animals’ lives through my work in JMICAWE and IAWEL.’

We are excited to have Miguel on board, and look forward to his impact on the team’s activities.

Scottish Animal Welfare Commission

 Plenary meeting of Scottish Animal Welfare Commission

JMICAWE director, Prof Cathy Dwyer, chaired a plenary session of the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission (SAWC) on Friday 11^th September. The meeting had to be held entirely online but, despite a few hiccoughs, the technology held up well and interesting and varied discussions were held. The Commission focuses on protecting wild and companion animals, as well as providing scientific and ethical advice to the Scottish Government. The remit of the Commission is to look at how the welfare needs of sentient animals are met by policy, consider possible legislative and non-legislative routes to protect animal welfare and identify research requirements as an evidence base for future policy developments.

At this plenary session the Commission considered the impact of Covid-19 on animal welfare – of particular concern in the UK has been a significant rise in the number of people looking to acquire puppies, where those puppies are being sourced and whether this will impact on future health and welfare of dogs.  SAWC also considered what is an appropriate definition of sentience when applied to animals, and for which species is there sufficient scientific evidence to consider that they are likely to be sentient. As part of the remit of the Commission is to specifically consider the protection of wildlife, SAWC also considered whether current conceptions of animal welfare could apply to wildlife, and specific issues relating to the management of deer, beaver and Scottish wildcats.

More information about the work of the Commission can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/groups/scottish-animal-welfare-commission/

Welcome to our new students coming to Edinburgh!

This week is Welcome Week for all our new students arriving at Edinburgh to begin student life, and an especially warm welcome (and welcome back) to our new and returning veterinary students. We are also delighted to be welcoming our next cohort of Masters students to the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies (R(D)SVS), whether they will be joining us at the Easter Bush campus or online to begin or continue their studies in animal behaviour and welfare.

In these uncertain times Welcome Week, and the first semester will feel a little bit different to usual for all of us, but the education teams have been working really hard to keep the campus secure and to provide a hybrid model of teaching with a blend of online and in person teaching. We are confident that our students will still have a great experience with us, and some of the new ways of teaching may even be an improvement on what we used to do in the past! For our MSc in Applied Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare it is a particularly special year since it marks 30 years since the course began, as the oldest MSc programme in animal welfare in world. We will also be planning events to celebrate this special milestone. 

The R(D)SVS is consistently ranked as one of the best veterinary schools in the world (most recently voted top in the UK by Guardian Newspaper: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/news-events/news-and-archive/2020-news/guardian-league-table-2021), and is located in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. If you are interested in studying with us as a veterinary student then you can find out more information here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet and see a video about student life here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNpX_DV7l4c

Or if you are interested in our postgraduate teaching in animal behaviour and welfare (or other subjects) then you can find out more here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/studying/postgraduate

We hope to be welcoming you to our campus one day too!

Welcome to our new JMICAWE PhD Student - Lisa Qing Yang

The JMICAWE team is delighted to welcome new PhD student, Lisa Qing Yang, to the team. Lisa will be doing her PhD part time in China, focusing on poultry farmers and how higher welfare standards might be implemented in China. She is keen to understand how Chinese poultry farmers perceive their current practice on farms and to develop interventions to encourage better welfare practice. 

This project will be built on multidisciplinary knowledge and qualitative research methodologies. Before pursuing her PhD, Lisa obtained her master’s degrees in International Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law at the University of Edinburgh, Non-profit Organisations and Civil Society Studies at the University of Kent, and Applied Linguistics at Sichuan University in China.

Lisa says: ‘I learnt the term “animal welfare” for the first time in 2010, when I joined an international animal welfare organisation as a Public Relations Officer. During 10 years of working as an animal welfare advocate in China, I have developed a passion in raising awareness of animal welfare to the public and supporting captive animal facilities implementing higher animal welfare practices’.

Lisa has organised public events to communicate animal welfare knowledge with the public and facilitated different international workshops to build capacities of veterinarians, animal carers and academia in China. She currently works for an international consulting company to support conventional egg farmers to convert to cage-free systems in Asia. Before the role of consultant, she worked as the China Researcher Officer at Compassion in World Farming, a leading global farm animal welfare organisation.

Lisa engaged with various stakeholders in the livestock industry with technical expertise to help them improve their farming practices and achieve higher animal welfare standards, with a focus on poultry and pigs. Lisa’s experience of working with stakeholders in the animal- related industries sparked her interest in studying human behaviour change and driving farmers to change to higher welfare practice.

We are excited to have Lisa in the team, and to be able to apply her considerable skill set to improving the welfare of poultry in China.

JMICAWE Publication on Improving Animal Welfare

Latest research from JMICAWE published, highlighting how knowledge is vital to improve animal welfare 

Dr Rioja-Lang preparing for the workshop 

that finalised the main issues for the study.

JMICAWE researchers have published their final paper in a series looking at prioritising animal welfare issues for different groups of animals, in work funded by the British Veterinary Association’s Animal Welfare Foundation (AWF). For this work, the JMICAWE team (led by the late Dr Fiona Rioja-Lang) established contact with 144 animal welfare experts and worked on all the main managed animal groups in the UK (farmed, companion and horses). Overall more than 600 welfare issues were identified by the work, and this indicates just how many areas we need to be concerned about when thinking about improving animal lives.

The aim of this final paper was to determine the most important welfare issues for each species, to think about methods for tackling them and to look for key recurring themes between species. Working with the experts the team identified that lack of knowledge, usually by owners, about the best way to care for the species was a key problem, alongside issues with managing the social and other behaviours of the species, owners not seeking appropriate health care and managing animals in inappropriate environments.

Other important issues involved decisions about breeding animals, particularly selecting specific characteristics in animals that might be associated with reduced health and fitness, feeding animals incorrectly, a poor ability to recognise when an animal is in pain, and not seeking euthanasia before significant animal suffering had occurred. Chronic or endemic health issues were also likely to be having a significant impact on animal lives, which may not be recognised by their owners.

Overall, the study suggests that further research is required in some areas, but better education for owners, especially before making a decision on acquiring an animal, is fundamental to improving animal welfare. Veterinarians are an important source of information for current and future animal owners and thus JMICAWE’s key mission, to improve veterinary education in animal welfare, will help to play a role in addressing the findings of this study.    

More information about the study can be found here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/jeanne-marchig-centre/activities/delphi which includes links to the published papers from the study.

More information about the Animal Welfare Foundation is available here: https://www.animalwelfarefoundation.org.uk/