Animal Welfare and Behaviour
Written by Ali Chew BSc(Hons), MSc, Dip CABC, BHSISM Clinical Animal Behaviour Counsellor
Behaviour has always been an integral part of animal welfare but it seems that it has only been in the last few decades that we have really taken this on board.
In the 1960s the Farm Animal Welfare Council developed the 'Five Freedoms' which was designed as a guide to assess all aspects of the welfare of a group or an individual animal. One of these Five Freedoms is 'the freedom to express normal behaviour'. However, it was not until earlier this year, when the UK's animal welfare legislation was overhauled and updated, that the law began to encompass animals' behaviour as well as their physical welfare. The Animal Welfare Act 2006 is designed to be more proactive than previous legislation and attempts to actively promote animal welfare. It states that an offence is committed if a person “does not take such steps as are reasonable in all the circumstances to ensure that the needs of an animal for which he is responsible are met to the extent required by good practice” (Animal Welfare Act 2006 s9(1) p7).
It goes on to specify that an animal's needs include its needs for a suitable environment and diet, its need to be able to exhibit normal behaviour patterns and to be housed with, or apart from, other animals and finally its need for protection from pain, suffering and disease (Animal Welfare Act 2006 s9(2)).
All these needs are in fact closely connected to behaviour and also to each other. A suitable environment not only must be safe for the animal but also should allow it to exhibit normal behaviour, and part of normal behaviour is normal foraging and normal social behaviour. An unsuitable diet can affect an animal physiologically (essentially by creating an instability in the delicate balance of chemicals which make up the body) and this can have a major impact on behaviour, but a diet may also be unsuitable because it does not occupy the animal's time appropriately. Pain and suffering can result from any of these needs not being met and are behavioural as well as physical concepts as the animal must perceive and be aware of them to be affected.
We really can't get away from behaviour when thinking about our animals' welfare and now that it is incorporated in law how might it affect us and our animals? This is a particularly interesting question when applied to horses, and perhaps we can look at this another time, but how this section of the law will work is far from clear. It appears that it will rely on codes of practice against which promotion of welfare through good management will be assessed. These codes of practice should themselves be based on sound scientific understanding of all aspects of welfare, not forgetting of course the behavioural aspect. Much research has been carried out recently in animal welfare science generally and in behaviour science particularly. An understanding of ethology is paramount to animal welfare and much progress has been made in this area, particularly in relation to certain domestic animals (ethology is the study of the natural behaviour of animals - essentially behaviour that has evolved and therefore has a genetic component). However other areas such as learning theory and training techniques, motivation and neurobiology are equally important, and the cognitive abilities of animals (their ability to process and use information such as in 'thinking' or 'reasoning') are the subject of a large body of current welfare research.
How this new law will work in general and in relation to behaviour specifically only time will tell. However, the fact that behaviour is now covered in animal welfare legislation has to be a positive step.
