Improving Animal Welfare: A Practical Approach

Completely revised and updated throughout, this new edition of Improving Animal Welfare: A Practical Approach continues to provide an accessible and comprehensive guide to improving the lives of production animals. It particularly considers advances in topics of increasing importance such as heat stress and other climate-related issues, system-specific considerations around organic farming, measuring the true sustainability of farming systems, and how to successfully transfer rapidly developing technologies from research to field. It also covers: Core concepts of animal welfare, such as handling and transport, stockmanship, husbandry procedures and euthanasia, with an increased focus on replacing painful procedures with alternatives. The wider context of welfare, including animal behaviour and emotions, ethics and economic factors. Implementing effective measurement techniques to track and improve welfare, as well auditing procedures. Practical species-specific information across cattle, pigs, poultry, fish and equids. Written by a team of experienced researchers and edited by an outstanding world expert on animal welfare, this book is essential reading for students and practitioners of ethology, animal and veterinary science, veterinary medicine, as well as anyone working directly with farm animals and committed to improving their welfare.

Temple Grandin is Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. Dr. Grandin's work includes design of animal handling systems, research on livestock behaviour, and auditing animal welfare. She has visited 26 countries and has served on the OIE animal welfare ad hoc committee for slaughter. Her previous livestock books include Livestock Handling and Transport, Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals and Humane Livestock Handling. Her popular press books on animal behaviour have been both U.S. and international bestsellers. Throughout her career, Dr. Grandin has worked to combine scientific research results with practical application in the field. In the North America half, the cattle are handled in equipment she designed for meat plants. She has received awards for her work on animal welfare from both the livestock industry and animal welfare NGOs. She has awards from The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, The American Meat Institute, American Society for Animal Science, Humane Society of the U.S and the American Veterinary Medical Association.