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.