SAWC Inaugural Meeting

Scotland’s Animal Welfare Commission starts its work

JMICAWE Director, Cathy Dwyer, has just chaired the inaugural meeting of Scotland’s first Animal Welfare Commission (SAWC). Despite the restrictions on travel and gatherings due to the current pandemic, all 12 members of the Commission were able to attend, either in person or via teleconferencing (something we are all going to be getting better at over the next few months), alongside representatives of Scottish Government and SAWC Secretariat. 

The Commission is made up of vets, animal welfare scientists, representatives of NGOs and other bodies representing companion animals and wildlife, as well as experts in animal welfare law, policy and enforcement. SAWC will be working with the UK Animal Welfare Committee (formerly FAWC – the Farm Animal Welfare Council of Five Freedoms fame) on farm animal matters, but will take particular responsibility for welfare issues of free-living wildlife, companion animals and areas of farm animal welfare of special relevance to Scotland.

‘It is an exciting time to be involved in animal welfare in Scotland – currently a new bill to protect animals is going through the Scottish parliament, which will increase penalties for animal abuse and powers of enforcement, and will provide better management of breeding and sales of puppies and kittens. We in SAWC are looking forward to being able to advise Scottish government and the Ministers on animal welfare and to having a positive impact on the lives of Scotland’s animals. Hopefully this will also encourage other countries to take similar approaches.’  

- Cathy Dwyer

New lambs for Mother’s Day

Lambing News from our JMICAWE Director Cathy Dwyer

In these difficult and frightening times we wanted to share something positive and uplifting with you. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is springtime and plants and animals are bursting with new life. If you can, take a look out of the window to spot birds or trees, or sit in the garden and soak up some nature and spring life! Even as we are struggling to come to terms with the public health emergency we are all experiencing nature is getting on with the job of life, and reminding us that we are only a part of what our amazing planet can support.

In Scotland this is the time of year when many of our lambs are born. Lambing is just gearing up on our farm and, despite social distancing measures, we are enjoying seeing the new lambs being delivered and the attentive and focused maternal care they are receiving.

This lovely pair of active and vigorous lambs are only a few hours old, and already they have full bellies of colostrum and milk, and their mother is taking great care of them. How appropriate that they were born just in time for Mother’s Day! These lambs will be taking part in a behavioural study to look at the importance of maternal care in the development of young animals, and will help us to understand how we can take better care of our farmed animals.

We know that mothers feed and protect their offspring, but there is evidence that they do so much more – from providing a secure base for young animals to explore and develop confidence, shaping the stress responses and responsiveness of offspring, to their capacity to teach young animals about the world and how to behave. We will be looking at different aspects of the social, physical and mental development of lambs, and how maternal care is influencing these responses, with the help of a PhD student and two MSc students. And will be posting updates on the progress and abilities of these lambs as the study progresses!

JMICAWE Team Update - COVID-19

Coronavirus and JMICAWE

In these difficult and challenging times we at JMICAWE just wanted to update you on our response and activities. As of last week we have moved to working from remotely and will not be in the office until told otherwise. Our teaching is now on line or suspended, dissertation students who were planning to travel for their projects are now being offered different areas of research and we are looking to support our students remotely as much as possible. As with everyone else, the most important thing is that we limit the spread of the virus and practise social distancing and isolation as much as we possibly can.

However, we are still working hard to promote animal welfare and to support teaching practices that help veterinary students and others learn more about animal welfare. At the moment we are working on our provision of on-line resources that can be accessed remotely anywhere in the world, from your homes if need be. We are working on promoting better welfare for farm animals, companion animals, street dogs and wildlife, and will be adding to our resources in this area through the summer.

Remember also, if you are at home and wondering how to fill your day, there is a lot of excellent learning material on line, including our own MOOCs (on animal welfare, dog and cat behaviour and poultry behaviour and welfare) so why not consider signing up for some free on line learning? There is more information about our courses and MOOCs here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/jeanne-marchig-centre/cpd 

We would also like to remind everyone that dogs and cats and other companion animals are not carriers of the virus; and there is no need to relinquish pets to shelters, which will be quickly overwhelmed and unable to care for these animals, especially if rehoming rates dry up. Please see some advice from Nancy de Briyne of Federation of Veterinarians of Europe here:

‘Just wanted to inform you that FVE made a special webpage for COVID and the veterinary profession. You can find it here: https://www.fve.org/covid-19-faqs/ and some leaflets together with FECAVA.
We also specially call for owners not to abandon their pets, which seems a worry in some countries. Please keep on spreading the word that at this moment, there is no evidence that animals can become ill and spread the virus further. IDEXX and other companies already tested thousands of dogs and cats on COVID, and all cases were negative. Two dogs so far in Hong Kong tested weak positive without being sick (both owners had COVID). Further tests showed that there was no evidence that COVID made the dogs sick or that the dogs could spread the virus. Pet owners should always maintain good hygiene practices (including handwashing before and after being around or handling animals, their food, or supplies, as well as avoiding kissing them) and under no circumstances should they abandon their pets. If an owner has COVID, close contact with family members, including pets, should be avoided.’

Save the Asian Elephants - Duncan McNair talk

Taking steps to improve the welfare of Asian elephants

JMICAWE were very pleased to host Duncan McNair, CEO of Save The Asian Elephant on Friday 13th March to learn more about the work this charity is doing to improve the welfare of Asian elephants. Across Asia elephants are in use providing elephant rides, performing in circuses and at temples, often for tourists. As Duncan explained to staff and students, this hides the true story of how these elephants have been treated, and are treated when tourists are not present. Asian elephants are not a domesticated species, so they are taken from the wild and their mothers at a very young age, often leading to the death or injury of the mother as they try to protect their offspring.

Young animals are then restrained, starved, beaten and attacked with bull hooks (known as ‘pajan’) in order that the animals can be compelled to respond to human commands. The process teaches the animal that humans are associated with pain and fear, and they should perform as asked to avoid further suffering. Elephants then spend large parts of their lives chained up and shackled, prevented from performing normal social behaviour and expressing other behavioural freedoms. Often the sole purpose of taking animals from the wild and treating them in this way is to provide ‘entertainment’ for tourists.

So the opportunity to make a change is in our hands - when booking holidays ask tour operators and guides about their policy on elephant attractions, avoid attending circuses or taking elephant rides when in Asia, and choose ethical elephant tourism, such as opportunities to see elephants in their natural habitat and engaging in normal behaviours. Tour companies and operators will respond to the requests of their clients so if enough of us reject attractions that treat elephants badly we can make a difference.

We also hope to be able to contribute practically to the improvement in elephant welfare by training of veterinary undergraduates in elephant medicine and welfare. For more information and ways to make a difference visit www.stae.org 

JMICAWE India Travels - Bhannergatta Bear Rehabilitation Centre

Bhannergatta Bear Rehabilitation Centre

During their visit to Bangalore, JMICAWE director, Cathy Dwyer and Kirstin McIlvaney (MSc Programme Coordinator for Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare, University of Edinburgh) were guests of Wildlife SOS and visited the Bhannergatta Bear Rehabilitation Centre. The Centre is one of two facilities that Wildlife SOS have developed to provide homes for ex-dancing bears now that this practice has been banned in India. Working with the communities that used to make their living from dancing bears Wildlife SOS has been able to provide sustainable improvements and other job opportunities for the villagers. 

The Centre now houses 75 Asian sloth bears, mostly those rehabilitated from villages but also a number of wild bears which have been brought in with injuries after conflicts with humans. Dancing bears were often taken from the wild when very young, and before they had learned to be bears from their mothers, so these animals can have many complex behavioural and health issues. The Centre provide a very comprehensive health care programme for the bears, and Cathy and Kirstin were particularly impressed with the work done to provide enrichment and training to provide positive animal welfare for these bears that had such a difficult start in life. 

The bears are trained with positive reinforcement (dates and honey in particular!) to cooperate with health assessments, and to approach the veterinarians to allow their teeth, paws and other bodily parts to be easily checked. Bears are also encouraged to explore, to climb and to range about their large forest enclosures so that they are able to express as much natural behaviour as possible. Overall it was a fantastic opportunity to see how lives can be improved for animals, even those that have had really difficult encounters with people, by an holistic approach to changing human behaviour and valuing the lives of animals.

JMICAWE India travels - Animal Welfare Workshop in Bangalore

Workshop on animal behaviour and welfare in Bangalore

JMICAWE Director, Cathy Dwyer, and the coordinator of the MSc programme in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare (University of Edinburgh), Kirstin McIlvaney, have just returned from a trip to the Veterinary College in Bangalore (Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Science University) where they ran a 3 day workshop on animal welfare and behaviour hosted by Dr Abdul Rahman and the Commonwealth Veterinary Association.

This was part of the work that JMICAWE are doing to capacity-build in Indian vet schools, and to support the new Animal Welfare Research Centre based in the vet school in Bangalore.  The workshop was attended by about 40 postgraduate students and faculty from 9 different vet schools across India. Cathy and Kirstin focused on animal welfare sciences, and particularly animal behaviour measurements. 

After a day in the classroom the workshop went out to visit the poultry and dairy facilities on site to practice their animal behaviour data collection skills. Half the group went with Kirstin to the poultry facility, where they compared the benefits of scan and focal sampling and discussed how they might use different techniques to address different issues. The other half of the group went with Cathy to the dairy unit where we looked at the importance of good ethograms, and piloting data collection methods, and had an attempt at conducting an on farm novel object test, based on previous methods used in the UK. We ended the workshop with discussion of teaching approaches to animal welfare, and exploring different teaching resources that were available.

Some of these resources are freely available and can be found on line at JMICAWE by following this link: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/jeanne-marchig-centre/cpd   

International Women's Day 2020

International Women’s Day, 2020

International Women’s Day (IWD) this year takes the theme that an equal world is an enabled world with #EachforEqual aiming to achieve gender equality.

The field of animal welfare has a great track record in supporting women, with many charities and animal welfare groups being founded and led by women and in the past we have celebrated these amazing achievements of women on previous IWDs. Whilst we still are amazed and humbled at the success and impact that women have had in improving animal welfare, this year we want to shine a spotlight on the unsung heroes for animals. Across the globe many small holder farmers and animals keepers are women. Daily activities of caring for animals, providing food and water, shelter, comfort and dealing with injuries are all part of the roles that women take on in many countries. Their care helps to produce productive animals that can feed their families and ensure that children can access education. Working equids enable families to earn a greater income, or can mean that water or food is brought more easily to the family or for other animals. These daily duties to provide care and love for animals are often undervalued as trivial ‘women’s work’ but are a vital part of supporting people and animals in some of the poorest and least equal countries in the world.

JMICAWE’s work has been to provide education to veterinarians in animal welfare in some of these countries, and to help to understand how important these animal caring roles are and how they need to be appreciated and the women who do them empowered.  In the west animal care is often a female dominated profession, with over 60% of UK veterinary students being women, and women dominating in veterinary nursing, animal welfare courses and animal care. These jobs are incredibly important – not just for the animals under their care but also for the much wider societal benefits through #OneWelfare. We firmly support and believe that the work of women in animal care is part of enabling a better world for us all.