New Video: Dog Welfare in Trap-Neuter-Return Programmes

We're very excited to announce the launch of our new video on YouTube, created in partnership with the Dog's Trust.

The Dog's Trust awarded the JMICAWE a grant to investigate dog welfare in Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programmes. This method is advocated by animal welfare organisations and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). However, with high targets for the TNR programmes in many countries, we need to ensure that we are not putting individual dog welfare at risk in order to achieve population control.

In this video, Heather Bacon, our Veterinary Welfare Education and Outreach manager talks about some of the work we've been doing with the Dog's Trust to understand and measure welfare in a TNR programme.

As Heather says, dog population management is a global issue. A good TNR programme will protect dog populations by improving their health, their relationships with the human community and controlling their population size. But a good TNR programme also needs to consider the use of welfare measures to monitor dog welfare while they are going through the programme.

Raising the issue of live animal use in veterinary education to a global scale

This month saw our welfare veterinary nurse, Hayley Walters, attend her second BSAVA (British Small Animal Veterinary Association) International Affairs Committee meeting. Held in Birmingham three times a year, Hayley is the first veterinary nurse to sit on the committee. The International Affairs Committee is responsible for links within the Union of European Veterinary Practitioners (UEVP) and the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE) as well as liaising with the Federation of European Companion Animal Veterinary Association (FECAVA) and the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) This committee allows BSAVA to identify and influence matters of importance to the small animal veterinary surgeon in Europe and further afield.

Sheep used for suturing practise at a vet school in China

JMICAWE’s Heather Bacon teaching suturing on a suture board

Hayley presented a report written by herself and colleague Heather Bacon, highlighting the use of live animals in veterinary education in vet schools in developing countries and how this is not only harmful to the animals used for clinical and surgical skills practise but also detrimental to the quality of education that the student receives. Veterinary students often feel conflicted when faced with having to perform unnecessary surgery on an animal in the name of their education. The report also highlighted research carried out showing that veterinary students lose empathy for animals as they progress through vet school and objectifying animals is necessary for them to be able to continue with their practical training. Vets have to be ambassadors for animal welfare so it is of the utmost importance that they leave vet school compassionate, empathetic and dedicated to improving the lives of the animals under their care.

Everyone attending the meeting agreed that countries still teaching students in this manner needed to align with international standards of education and a unanimous decision was made to present the report to BSAVA’s scientific committee. Once the report has been approved it will receive BSAVA’s full endorsement and ultimately be sent to WSAVA. WSAVA is a global veterinary community set up to facilitate the exchange of scientific information between individual veterinarians and veterinary organisations all over the world.

JMICAWE made several recommendations in the report, including how to phase out the harmful use of live animals in veterinary education, and it is hoped that with WSAVA’s endorsement to its worldwide contacts, more vet schools will look to make the change.

 

EU Zoos Directive – Good Practices Document published

 

The EU zoos directive was developed in 1999 to define what constitutes a zoo, and to emphasise the role of the zoo in conservation of biodiversity.




Image taken from EU Zoo Directive



A zoo was defined as “all permanent establishments where animals of wild species are kept for exhibition to the public for 7 or more days a year, with the exception of circuses, pet shops and establishments which Member States exempt from the requirements of this Directive on the grounds that they do not exhibit a significant number of animals or species to the public”

However no EU-wide legislation or directive currently exists to safeguard the welfare of zoo animals. To date, member state legislation has had only the guidance from Article 3 of the directive to guide their responsibilities to safeguarding animal health and welfare: “accommodating their animals under conditions which aim to satisfy the biological and conservation requirements of the individual species, inter alia, by providing species specific enrichment of the enclosures; and maintaining a high standard of animal husbandry with a developed programme of preventive and curative veterinary care and nutrition”

The problem with this phrasing is that neither conservation, nor biological requirements of zoo species are defined, and no guidance is given as to what constitutes a high standard of animal husbandry, so the spectrum of husbandry actually delivered can be very variable.

To address these gaps, the EU Commission recently commissioned the production of a guidance document to standardise interpretation of the EU zoos directive. The welfare section of this document was primarily constructed by Leonor Galhardo, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh’s MSc Applied Animal behaviour and welfare programme, in partnership with Heather Bacon of the JMICAWE.

 

“Zoo animal welfare is an exciting and rapidly developing field of research and practice” said Heather, “positive engagement with the zoo community is essential, not only for to deliver effective guidance on improving zoo animal welfare, but also, for helping us to understand the challenges faced by the zoo community”

 

The Good Practice document can be download at:

 

ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/pdf/EU_Zoos_Directive_Good_Practices.pdf

The Crate Escape – Dog Trafficking in the News

Scottish readers may have spotted JMICAWE’s Heather Bacon in the Sunday Mail at the end of last month, as she was asked to give an interview on the dog meat trade in Asia which has hit the international headlines recently following the Yulin Festival earlier in the year. Heather has witnessed first-hand some of the practices that go on in Asia to obtain, transport and kill these dogs, and was asked to talk about it after a report was released by our partner Animals Asia on the illegal dog meat trade.

You may recognise Heather and Hayley’s own dogs, Stewart, Mothi and Matilda (pictured below) who were rescued from the dog meat trade when Heather and Hayley worked over in Asia a few years ago.

You can read the full article by clicking on this link;

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scots-vet-fight-free-dogs-6140300

 

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