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.

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/