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Husbandry and Animal Welfare

John Webster

KEY CONCEPTS

1.1 Introduction

      1.1.1 Traditional Agriculture

      1.1.2 Industrial Agriculture

      1.1.3 Value-led Agriculture

      1.1.4 One-planet Agriculture

1.2 Concepts in Animal Welfare

      1.2.1 Sentience, Welfare and Wellbeing

      1.2.2 Stress and Suffering

1.3 Principles of Husbandry and Welfare

      1.3.1 The Five Freedoms and Provisions

      1.3.2 Good Feeding

      1.3.3 Housing and Habitat

      1.3.4 Fitness and Health

      1.3.5 Freedom from Fear and Distress: The Art of Stockmanship

1.4 Breeding for Fitness

1.5 Transport and Slaughter

1.6 Ethics and Values in Farm Animal Welfare

1.1 Introduction

The broad aim of this book, as in earlier editions, is to provide an introduction to the management and welfare of farm animals through the practice of good husbandry within the context of an efficient, sustainable agriculture. Successive chapters outline these principles and practices for the major farmed species within a range of production systems, both intensive and extensive. This chapter opens with a description of concepts in animal welfare that may be applied to any sentient farm animal, then progresses to general principles that may be applied to their management. These general principles are illustrated by specific examples relating to animal species and production systems (e.g. broiler chickens, dairy cows). For those of you who are new to the study of animal management and animal welfare, some of these examples may make sense only when you have read the chapter on the species to which they refer. I also suggest that, when you have read, learned and inwardly digested a chapter on a particular species, you might refer back to this opening chapter and consider how well (or not) current management practices for that species meet the general criteria for good husbandry and welfare within the categories outlined here.

The purpose of farming is to use the resources of the land to provide the people with food and other goods. For most of the history of agriculture and, even now, throughout most of the world, the role of the farmer has been straightforward: to produce food to meet the needs of the people. If they could produce it, we would buy it. Today, in developed, affluent, urbanized society, consumers have much greater freedom in their choice of food and their decisions will range beyond the direct elements of price and nutritive value to include issues such as provenance, animal welfare and environmental cost. An increasing number, ovo-lacto-vegetarians, reject meat. Vegans will not eat or wear anything of animal origin. To succeed, modern farmers must combine a knowledge and understanding of how to care for the life of their land with a shrewd awareness of the needs and wants of their consumers to obtain the best possible value from what they have to sell. Successful livestock farmers are those who also have the best understanding of the needs and wants of their animals.

Successive chapters will consider the special needs of different farmed species and provide practical advice as to how to meet these needs within the context of viable production systems. The aim of this opening chapter is to introduce principles of husbandry and welfare as they apply to the feeding, breeding, management and care of animals throughout their lives on farms large and small, and in times of special need such as during transport and at the point of slaughter. Most of the meat, milk and eggs for sale to the public in the developed world come from highly intensive systems in which very large numbers of animals are confined and 'managed' by very few people. However, farm animals in most of the world are still reared within traditional communities where animals are more likely to be cared for on an individual basis. At the time of writing the previous edition, the big concern for livestock farmers was the growing movement to reject industrialized farming methods and return to systems that appear to afford more care and respect to farm animals as individuals. This has been expressed both by those who seek organic, high-welfare or trusted local produce in the shops and by those who wish to farm, whether full- or part-time, to such standards. Today, our concerns are not just for high standards of farm animal welfare through skilled and sensitive animal husbandry but also for the sustainability of the living environment through skilled and sensitive planet husbandry that takes into account wildlife, soil and water conservation, and the contribution of agriculture to climate change.

This new edition addresses these issues from first principles, on the basis that the fundamental welfare needs of an animal such as a chicken are the same, whether it is scavenging for food in an African village or confined in a controlled environment building containing 100,000 birds. The ethical challenge in either circumstance is how to reconcile the welfare needs of the animals, the needs of the farmers to obtain a fair return for their investment and labour, the needs of the people for safe, high-quality, affordable food and last (but not least) the need to preserve the quality of the living environment.

1.1.1 Traditional Agriculture

Agriculture, past, present and future, can be defined by four eras: traditional, industrial, value-led and one-planet. Traditional agriculture, as practised for most of history, and still practised in much of the world today, was low output but sustainable, not least because most of the animals looked after themselves. Sheep and goats consumed fibrous food, unavailable to humans, commonly grazing land the farmer did not own. Chickens and pigs (where culturally acceptable) were fed or scavenged leftovers, and food that humans failed to harvest or elected not to eat. In many traditional communities, chickens also fulfilled a valuable community service, consuming ticks and other pests of humans and animals. A dairy cow justified more attention from the farmer (or more likely his wife) who would cut, cart and conserve her feed since she (the cow) was a source of real income through sale of milk. The system seldom generated great riches but it was usually sustainable, partly because it imposed a minimal drain on capital reserves such as fossil fuels, but mainly because nothing was wasted. The use of food and other resources by humans and farm animals was complementary rather than competitive.

1.1.2 Industrial Agriculture

It is easy for the well-educated, well-fed citizen of the developed world to paint a rosy picture of traditional agriculture. However, it provided little more than subsistence for most farmers, most of the time, and could not meet our modern expectations for a wide variety of good, safe, cheap food in all seasons. This has been achieved through an industrial revolution in farming that began less than 100 years ago, and only in the industrialized world. In undeveloped countries, it has hardly started. The key distinction between the traditional and the intensive livestock or poultry farm is that nearly all the inputs to the latter system - power, machinery and other resources (e.g. food and fertilizers) - are bought in. Until recently, output from these farms has been constrained only by the amount that the producer can afford to invest in capital and other non-renewable resources and the capacity of the system to process them. Such livestock enterprises can rightly be designated as 'factory farms' on the basis that most, or all, of the feed and other resources necessary to rear the animals in confinement do not come from the farm itself but arrive by truck. Now, the first constraint on expansion of these intensive units is the need to dispose of slurry, manure and other wastes without causing pollution.

The key objective of industrialized livestock production can be summed up in a single phrase: to control the environment in the immediate vicinity of the animal. The overall impact of industrialized agriculture has had the opposite effect: it has disrupted the balance of nature that had been sustained for millennia. Controlled environment, precision farming is based on three principles. Feeding involves the provision of a nutritionally balanced ration in optimal quantities and at least cost. Housing is designed partly to provide animals with comfort and security, but mainly to maximize income relative to the costs of building and labour. Control of health is achieved through attention to biosecurity and hygiene. These general principles will be developed below and applied to the various species of farm animals in successive chapters.

Figure 1.1 outlines the genealogy of the intensive livestock farm, as typified by modern intensively housed pig and poultry units (Webster 2005). Some feed for pigs and poultry (e.g. cereals) may be grown within the farm enterprise, but this, along with purchased feed supplements to ensure a balanced diet, is trucked onto the unit and dispensed to animals in controlled environment houses by mechanical feeding systems. Mechanical and electrical power is used to...