Introduction to Animal Welfare

• Animal welfare refers to the physical and psychological well-being of animals, emphasizing proper housing, nutrition, disease prevention, humane handling, and freedom from suffering.
• Covers farm animals, companion animals, laboratory animals, working animals, and wildlife in human care.
• Ensures sustainable livestock production, ethical treatment, public health safety, and compliance with international standards.
• Animals are kept fit through good husbandry, hygiene, preventative medicine and prompt treatment of injury and disease.
• Animal welfare means how an animal is coping with the conditions in which it lives
• An animal is in a good state of welfare if it is healthy, comfortable, and well nourished, safe, able to express innate behavior, and if it is not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear, and distress.

Welfare means

• Desire to prevent unnecessary animal suffering
• State of an animal as it attempts to cope with environmental change. Welfare will vary in a continuum from poor to good
• Important to distinguish those effects which reduce fitness from those which do not
• Animals may go through difficult periods but may succeed in coping without long-term effects