ka4: animal welfare

• Intensive farming is less ethical than free range farming due to poorer animal welfare.
• Free range requires more land and is more labour intensive but can be sold at a higher price and animals have a better quality of life.
• Intensive farming often creates conditions of poor animal welfare but is often more cost effective, generating higher profit as costs are low.
• Behavioural indicators of poor animal welfare are stereotypy, misdirected behaviour, failure in sexual or parental behaviour and altered levels of activity.
• Very low (apathy) or very high (hysteria) levels of activity.
• • Costs

  Free-range requires more land and is more labour intensive but can be sold at a higher price and animals have a better quality of life.

  Intensive farming often creates conditions of poor animal welfare but is often more cost effective, generating higher profit as costs are low.
• • Benefits

  Contented, unstressed animals grow better, breed more successfully & generate products of higher quality.
• • Ethics

  Intensive farming is less ethical than free-range farming due to poorer animal welfare. E.g. it is unethical to subject domesticated animals to a regime of pain & distress to provide humans with cheap food.
• The “Animal welfare act 2006” enshrined the “Five Freedoms for animal welfare” into law.

   

  These are freedom:

  • From hunger and thirst.

  • From discomfort.

  • From pain, injury and disease.

  • To behave normally.

  • From fear and distress.
• Stereotypy: Repetitive behaviours, may be natural but out of context. E.g. cats pacing in zoos, rocking in mammals, chewing without food present.
• Misdirected behaviour: Normal behaviour is directed inappropriately e.g. animals may mutilate themselves by over-grooming, plucking or chewing itself. Or, be misdirected towards the surroundings e.g. chewing the bars of a cage.
• Failure in sexual behaviour: Natural pattern of sexual behaviour either in terms of partners or timing or action does not happen.
• Failure in parenting behaviour: Especially in mammals, where normal parenting behaviours and lack of care occur. This can lead to the offspring not thriving or even dying. Or the offspring also exhibiting abnormal behaviours.