[Music] monsieur le président assure colleague prasad present a CEO or McCune say a duty Liz L along the Shakespeare I found a new path Barbara sale along the malya along a continuation on Glen first to say thank you for the opportunity to share some ideas with you today and for giving me the easy job of using my native language while you do the hard work of participating in a second or third or fourth language because tweets have become the means of communicating for all important things I thought I should begin with the tweet version of this presentation and here it is in improving animal welfare we have paid a lot of attention to facilities and not enough attention to people and to discuss the tweet I wanted to talk about two models of social change that happened during the 19th century during the same period of time and that I feel have major implications for animal welfare today on the left is a picture will come to the right-hand side later on the left we see a picture from a textile factory during the industrial revolution at a time when women and children were still working in factories often under conditions we would today consider highly dangerous and unhealthy and four lengths of time we would consider inhumane this led to a social reform movement to improve the welfare of workers and as one example of the of the reformers attitudes in 1833 when the British Parliament was debating new legislation to protect worker welfare one reformer wrote about the children working in factories drowsy and exhausted the poor creatures fall too often among the machinery which is not in many instances sufficiently sheathed when their muscles are lacerated their bones broken or their limbs torn off in response to this reform movement the industrialized countries created generally speaking regulatory systems to control factory environments and the times when people could be required to work there as one example in England a series of legislation was passed during the 1800s called the factory acts and they tried to improve the environment for workers and limit the hours of work so as one example there's a few examples from England in 1802 and Act required ventilation and cleaning of textile factories in 1819 it set a 12 hour maximum workday for children under the age of 16 1844 dangerous machinery had to be fenced by 1878 no children under 10 could work in factories and by 1901 we are becoming more sophisticated we see controls on dust and fumes and a requirement for 407 cubic meters of air space per worker in order to maintain air quality so a reform movement based on regulating the working environment for the workers and the time that they could spend there that was in the 1800s a century later people started to see scenes like this or this or this as animal production intensified now to the people involved in intensive animal production the the feeling was that intensification was really the modernization of sector where people were using specialization automation economies of scale in order to reduce waste make production more efficient reduce costs and so on but to the critics of intensification they saw intensification not as modernization but as industrialization Farms had become in their view factory farms animals were being treated as animal machines and with this perception of intensification as industrialization a reform movement grew up very similar to what had happened a century before over the welfare of workers calling for legislation to restrict the nature of the facilities and the time that that that animals could be confined there some examples well in in England the first animal welfare legislation was so closely modeled after the old factory acts that one official referred to it as a factory act for animals and again the emphasis was on facilities so for example 1988 hens in the UK had to have 450 square centimeters of floor space rising in 2003 to 550 square centimeters throughout the European Union and then by 2012 750 square centimeters plus a perch nest box and litter as in the old factory acts there was emphasis on air quality so for example since 2010 broiler chickens in Europe have to have ammonia levels less than 20 parts per million and roughly similar to restrictions on hours of work we see restrictions on time of confinement for example in 1988 dairy cows had to be outside could not be permanently indoors during the summer months in Sweden so the response to concern over the welfare of animals closely followed the response to concern over the welfare of workers in factories largely by regulating the environment and time of confinement but is this approach working to safeguard animal welfare well some elements of it almost certainly are so for with broiler chickens for example we know from experimental work that if ammonia level rises above about 25 parts per million we see an increase in mortality rate problems in eyes and respiratory system and so on so a limit on the ammonia level in the air would almost certainly be beneficial and for laying hens we know from research that the hens are motivated to obtain litter perch for resting a nest box for laying so other things being equal facilities that allow these features should improve animal welfare but over the past 10 years a new body of research on animal welfare benchmarking so measuring animal welfare outcomes and comparing different farms this has produced a set of data that are giving us a very different picture it started with a study of broiler chickens in the United Kingdom done by Marian Dawkins and co-workers which monitored a number of very basic welfare outcomes death rate lameness leg lesions foot lesions and so on it was actually a huge experiment in space allowance because they had ten different companies operating a hundred and fourteen flocks and each company agreed to house some flocks at each of five different levels of space allowance the results showed that space allowance did have an effect on some of the variables but the really large differences were not between different space levels but between different companies so for example death rate in the best company was 1.4 percent mortality the worst 14 percent mortality lameness 0% of birds lame in the best company 90 percent lame in the worst leg lesions 0 to 80 percent foot lesions 0 to 88 percent this was followed by a study about 149 flocks looking at moderate and severe foot lesions which ranged from 0 in the best flock to 72 percent in the worst and a study of lameness on 176 flocks ranging from 0 lame in the best flock to 84 percent lame in the worst just to convince you that this is not only a poultry problem let me give an example from another species some of my colleagues in Vancouver have done a study of benchmarking welfare outcomes in dairy farms all using this kind of open free stall system they found that in 121 farms lameness ranged from 5% in the best farm to 85% in the worst then a study in the United States with 50 farms lame and severely lame ranging from 3 to 57% a study in the UK 205 farms lame and severely lame ranging from 0 to 79% it would be very tempting for me to spend the rest of my time traumatizing you and boring you with table after table of data showing that these huge variations in welfare outcomes apply to different species different welfare measures different environments and so on but all of those data can be summed up so simply that also can be said in the tweet in fact all great science can be said in tweets the world is round the planets orbit the Sun life evolves groundbreaking scientific tweets so here is my tweet for all those data not nearly as elegant as those others that very different welfare outcomes occur in the same type of environment and why is this well the answer is almost certainly that the environment is not the only determinant maybe not the major determinants of welfare outcomes so here we see that intensification is not the same as industrialization in factories where the workers are spending only part of their time regulating the environment and limiting exposure times may be a satisfactory way of overcoming the welfare problems that are created but in intensive animal production where the animals are constantly under human care surely the behavior conscientiousness etc of the people providing that care must also be a major determinant of animal welfare outcomes so leading me to this human dimension of animal welfare but but what is involved here well you are all animal people so let me ask you right now mentally to make a quick list of the things you consider important in people human behavior that influence welfare outcomes I will then give my reading of the research and at the end if I have missed something on your list this will be a wonderful topic for discussion I think the first and obvious thing is knowledge and dedication if we think of this kind of environment imagine all the things that need to be noticed and at conscientiously attended to in order to achieve good welfare outcomes here so temperature humidity litter quality dust ammonia biosecurity parasites nutrition and on and on so if we have people who are knowledgeable about the importance of these factors and conscientious enough to manage them carefully we can imagine the importance this has for welfare outcomes so the difference between a good welfare outcome and a bad welfare outcome may be having the staff with that kind of knowledge and dedication I think a second element is consistency in the study by Marion Dawkins some of the flocks were tended by only one or two people all the time others were tended by a rotating group of up to five different individuals which do you think had the better welfare outcomes well what sorry the study showed that the flocks that were attended by only one or two people consistently rather than a rotating group of different people had some what was the lower mortality rate was seen in the in the flocks with one or two staff people they also the staff made somewhere between to ascertain some cases - in some cases five visits to the barn every day and it's no surprise to learn that in those barns visited five times a day welfare outcomes were better than those visited only twice a day this kind of result that it is good to have consistent staff and paying a high level of attention to animals comes up all the time and I brought a particularly exotic example from this species clouded leopard a study of 72 of these animals in 12 different zoos which were clearly variable in the level of nervousness and the physiological indicators of stress using fecal corticosteroid metabolites as a measure of stress the study showed that when the number of keepers was only two per animal it was lower stress than if there was a rotating group of up to seven and in those cases where the keepers spent a lot of time in contact with the animals level of stress was lower than in those cases where they spent a minimal amount of time this was actually counterintuitive to some people in the zoo environment who thought these are wild animals we should keep us have as little contact as possible and the results showed just the opposite I think another element is is skillful handling the field is indebted to Paul Hemsworth in Australia shown here many years ago with his book called human livestock interactions Paul and his co-workers have done decades of research on how the handling of animals influences animal welfare and productivity outcomes in one study for example they visited 66 dairy farms and showed that the amount of negative handling by the staff so this is slaps hits pushes and tail twists gave a positive correlation with the avoidance of a handler in a standardized test a positive correlation with the amount of stress-related hormone cortisol in the milk and a negative correlation with yearly milk yield and from these and many other studies Hemsworth's group proposed the very simple model that negative handling or inconsistent handling which is often just about as bad can create a state of chronic fear of people in the animals leading to a classic stress response which in that in turn reduces growth rate immune competence affects health and so on they've also shown that this is one element of this is people having a positive attitude toward animals at least in the case of certain species in one of their studies they used a questionnaire to separate those people who described dairy cows as stimulating entertaining and intelligent versus those who described them in negative terms like noisy smelly and ugly and they found that those who had a positive attitude toward the animals used more appropriate handling methods and and that that triggered through the system and they proposed the selection and training of staff training and skillful handling selection of people with a positive attitude toward animals can impact this entire system I think another element is recognizing that animals are individuals I'm going to use one more dairy example because and I'm going to quote the results because otherwise you wouldn't believe me a study in the UK concluding on farms where cows were called by name milk yield was 258 litres higher than on farms where this was not the case and do you know this also works with students so I keep my classes to about 70 because that's the limit of my memory and I'm so that by halfway through the term I know everybody by name and I'm convinced that that has a major effect on their productivity in one case a young lady said to me some years later that partway through the year she realized I knew who she was and so therefore she didn't want to screw up how could this apply however to poultry where the numbers are so much greater well I think we can imagine that if we think of animals as individuals rather than an amorphous this encourages us to look for unusual behavior to watch for animals being disadvantaged by the social hierarchy to think of animals as having perhaps different needs than others in the same flock and so on another thing I see emerging is the idea that the animals and the environment and the people combine to create a culture of care on a farm that can range from very good to very poor I suspect we've all been in a barn which was simply a pleasure to visit this one sticks in my mind it was an egg-laying operation with fifty thousand hens run by a family that never used cages for 50 years they had been improving their non cage system of egg-laying in this case the environment was pleasant very little dust no noise good ventilation the birds themselves were almost friendly and would cluster around your feet as you went into the barn and in this pleasant environment with these animals that appeared to be thriving and interested it was simply a pleasure to be there and you wanted to stay and watch the animals we've probably all had the opposite experience in a barn so unpleasant that the first question is how quickly we can leave and how can we possibly create an environment for a culture of care in that kind of situation here was an interesting study by a sociologist done on dairy farms in New Zealand like this one noticing how the layout of the farm influenced the way in which people interacted with animals and they emphasized the key importance of designing systems and structures that promote positive interactions between animals and humans I think this illustrates how animal welfare is often and the complex out of the animals the environment and the people including how the environment influences the interaction between people and animals and one more element of this human dimension I believe is attending to human well-being [Music] one example is neglect of animals which is the most common reason for cruelty charges where farm animals are involved and research now indicates that many of these cases are related to the health and mental health of the of the farmer a recent study in Denmark followed individuals who had been charged with neglect and concluded that animal neglect is embedded in a complex network of other problems in agriculture including severe financial difficulties divorce and psychiatric problems another recent study done in in Ireland and followed 13 cases of neglect of animals it found that in five of the cases the problem appeared to be age and health related difficulties by the farmer who for some reason could not attend to the welfare of the animals in four cases the problem was a younger and seemingly healthy person but with depression or other problems of mental health again commonly related to financial stress family stress and so on as the as seen in the Danish study and in only four cases the problem seemed to be that the farmer didn't attach much importance to animal welfare for example by by not bothering to call a veterinarian when one was needed so apart from those last four cases what we see is the need to attend to the human health and human mental health in in order to address problems of animal welfare just one simple example recently in Canada we had a farmer charged with neglect the the family physician was involved the physician through some simple blood work found that the person was suffering from a very low level of vitamin b12 and we know from work with geriatric patients of course that a deficiency in vitamin b12 is a common cause of a temporary dementia relatively easily solved by vitamin supplementation so here to solve the animal welfare problem we had dissolved the human health and mental health problem now cases of actual neglect are extremes but I suspect this is the tip of the iceberg the iceberg being a profound relationship between the welfare of animals and the health and mental well-being of the people who look after them this brings us to the concept of one welfare is this familiar term in Tso's be an Astra also be an Astra that we're starting to use to mean that human welfare and animal welfare are closely connected and that both depend on the environment where where they live we're finally starting to see some research and and social programs in this area of one one welfare as one example a study in Canadian province of Quebec found that farmers had a higher level of suicide and a much higher level of work-related stress than the general population a response by the farmer organization you know the product reg recall has been to create a system of mental health sentinels these are 600 individuals who visit many farms they may be veterinarians feed sales persons and so on they receive one day of training which is enough that they can recognize incipient signs of possible suicide or deteriorating mental health and know how to make referrals I think that the take home message is that paying attention to the health and mental health of of the people who work with is an integral part of our animal welfare system so there is my list of the human dimension of animal welfare and if there's something in your mental list that I haven't covered please raise it as soon as we come to the questions I spoke at the beginning about two models of change the one on the on the left being the regulated industry we're improving the welfare of the people was achieved by regulating the facilities and exposure time and I think that is the model that was adopted almost without much thought in the case of regulating for farm animal welfare but on the right is the that that's the model of a regulated industry on the right I have putting up the model of a profession and here I used a photo an old drawing of Florence Nightingale the famous nurse who during exactly the same period of time as the factory acts were being passed created major improvements in human welfare in a very different way in 1840 when Florence Nightingale announced that she wanted to become a nurse by all reports her family and friends were horrified being a nurse at that time was a low status untrained occupation barely better than prostitution Florence Nightingale recognized the challenge in 1860 she created the first School of Nursing to increase the competence and respect that nurses received and by the end of the century the registered nurse was being recognized as a as a respected profession in many countries of the world so here is a very different model of change not regulating the environment but focusing on the competence and performance of the people in what we could call professionalism well what is a they're not all the same but by most accounts a profession involves providing a service to the public or to clients participation requires competence not merely market success and social acceptability is maintained by self-regulation within the profession rather than simply regulations imposed by government so given these features could animal producers reshape their occupation to be more like a profession that is trusted and less like an industry that people want to regulate well of course animal production provides a service just as human healthcare provides a service there is also a high level of competence that we see in many animal producers unlike Florence Nightingale at the start of Nursing we already have sophisticated programs of training and education and still are examples of highly competent highly performing producers the problem is that when we go to the benchmarking data we see that the outcomes are extremely variable there is a high level of competence there is there are also low levels of competence self-regulation I think this is the sticking point and what is largely missing is a self regulatory system whereby producers set standards and then require their colleagues to live up to those standards but we're starting to see some steps in this direction so in Canada we have almost no regulations protecting farm animal welfare but in instead I think we are in the early stages of an emerging self regulatory system don't let me overstate this it is just at the beginning but we are seeing for example national codes that are developed by producers and others based on science expertise and with public input we are seeing some producer LED inspection programs and we are seeing some producer lend correction activities when for example producers take the lead in correcting the actions of another producer who has shipped animals inappropriately to to market so I think there is the beginning but what we need is a clear vision and a well worked out strategy so could animal production become more like a profession I think with the right vision and leadership it can what would this achieve first of all it would give producers the driving role in the process of reform second I believe it would in time improve public confidence in producers and third I think it is the most promising way to safeguard animal welfare conclusions to date animal welfare reforms have been modeled on worker welfare legislation that regulated the physical environment and exposure time and factories but for animal welfare the same type of environment can produce very different welfare outcomes at least partly because of this human dimension of animal welfare including knowledge and dedication consistency skillful handling positive attitude thinking of animals as individuals creating a culture of animal care and attending to human well-being and I believe that shifting to a professional model focused on this human dimension is the next step in improving animal welfare and for those who want more and more of those tables and details much of what I have said can be found in two publications one called good animal production become a profession and one called turning science into policy the case of farm animal welfare in Canada and I'm very happy to send you copies of these if you drop me an email thank you very much