Search

Compassionate conservation is an ethical framework proposed to instill greater compassion for individual animals in conservation science and practice. In addition to highlighting compassion as a virtue, compassionate conservationists propose four ethical principles (first do no harm , individuals matter , inclusivity , and peaceful coexistence) to capture what it means to act compassionately in conservation. In this paper I argue for a revision of this framework. I begin by showing how compassionate conservationists also implicitly promote the virtue of respect, which better accounts for the principles individuals matter and inclusivity , yet entails a further principle: respect for autonomy. I further suggest that, to reflect genuine compassion for wild animals, the principles first , do no harm and peaceful coexistence should be replaced by empathy , understanding , and minimize harm. In the second half of the paper, I discuss the implications of this revised framework. I argue that, due to the prevalence of suffering even in well-conserved ecosystems, compassion and respect motivate a more active management of natural environments in order to reduce the harms (natural and anthropogenic) that wild animals face. This reveals a greater need for discussions on how to balance the flourishing of wild animals against the preservation of biodiversity, as well as a need to identify new approaches to conservation which better promote both ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Choice and control" is a phrase used widely in animal welfare science to describe providing captive animals with the ability to select between possible outcomes (stimuli or events). This concept has gained traction as a pivotal management technique across a variety of captive settings; however, little has been done to quantitatively evaluate choice as a welfare-improving practice. Our goal was to use a PRISMA framework to identify and review the current empirical literature on the welfare effects of choice provisions by examining measurable behavioural and biological outcomes. We evaluated choice-based studies which used an experiment design to compare choice to non-choice conditions and the impact of choice on welfare. Covidence software was used to screen and extract data from peer-reviewed literature identified across PubMed, Web of Science Advanced, and Scopus Advanced databases. Study inclusion was contingent upon a methodology which offered options for at least two or more stimuli/events given concurrently and which also contrasted a choice condition to a non-choice condition. A total of 13 papers were identified and included in this review. The majority of the papers included choices associated with enclosure access, food, and enrichment devices which resulted in improved behavioral and physiological welfare indicators across zoological, agricultural, and research laboratory settings. However, the presence of a couple papers reporting unclear or neutral impacts highlighted the need for further empirical research into the welfare impacts of choice. Increased experimental examinations with a wider range of captive settings and species are discussed and considered necessary to better comprehend the welfare benefits of providing increased choice opportunities for captive animals. [Display omitted] • Choice is considered a critical component of captive animal welfare. • We conducted a scoping review of experimental studies of choice and welfare. • Most choice studies were conducted with mammals, in zoos, and on enclosure manipulations. • Most studies showed a positive effect from a choice condition, but more research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Careers in the poultry industry are ever evolving to address global challenges and include collaborations with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures from around the world. Employers are seeking college graduates who are prepared to use novel approaches to address local and global industry challenges. A primary goal of undergraduate animal and poultry science programs should be to focus on courses and opportunities for students to engage in activities that promote workforce and essential skill development. A symposium at the 2024 Poultry Science Association annual meeting included a unique perspective from academic and industry professionals on the essential skills needed by graduates to be most successful in the industry. This paper is a summary of the symposium's presentations concerning workforce development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to analyze the aspects affecting broiler welfare with the use of Text Mining technique. This approach converts text into numerical data and analyzes word frequency distributions, enabling the extraction of useful information and the identification of relationships between elements. Text mining has limitations, i.e. ambiguity and context sensitivity, making it difficult to capture nuanced meanings. The search was carried out with Scopus using the term "Welfare" with the keywords "Chicken", "Broiler", "Broiler chicken", and "Chicken meat", to create a database of abstracts. Text Mining and Topic Analysis were performed on the abstracts (1228 documents) using the Software R 4.3.1., analyzing also the weight of bigram and trigram. Publications on broiler welfare are present in the bibliography since 1990′s, but in the last 10 years, for the interest of public opinion, the numbers of publications significantly increased (76.5% of all documents published). USA, Brazil, and Europe-27 published 60% of the documents found. The works were published in a high number of journals, but 37% of them are published in only 4 journals (Poultry Science, Animals, Applied Animal Behavior Science and Animal Welfare). Text Mining analysis identified key terms related to the slaughter phase, housing management, and environmental conditions such as light quality and quantity. Moreover, a high correlation was found between some terms, underlying the importance of the effects of rearing, slaughter phases and litter management on broiler welfare. Most of the countries focused their research on some specific topics identified by Topic Analysis, mainly genetic selection, feeding, stocking density, slaughter, and consumer perceptions. Poultry Science published the highest number of papers (18%) and the topics more investigated were growing performance, transport and slaughter, and litter management. In conclusion, the high number of publications on chicken welfare underlines the importance of broiler welfare both in Europe and in other countries, even if it is difficult to identify common research topics among the geographic areas and the evolution over the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With an established history of controversy in the UK, the use of animals in science continues to generate significant socio-ethical discussion. Here, the figure of 'the public' plays a key role. However, dominant imaginaries of 'the public' have significant methodological and ethical problems. Examining these, this paper critiques three ways in which 'the public' is currently constructed in relation to animal research; namely as un- or mis-informed; homogenous; and holding fixed and extractable views. In considering an alternative to such imaginaries, we turn to the Mass Observation Project (MOP), a national life-writing project in the UK. In its efforts to generate writing which is typically reflexive, its recognition of the plurality and performativity of identity, and embrace of knowledge as situated yet fluid, the MOP offers lessons for approaching views towards animal research and the role of publics in dialogue around the practice. In considering the MOP, we underline the need to acknowledge the role of method in shaping both what publics are able to articulate, and which positions they are able to articulate from. Finally, we stress the need for future dialogue around animal research to involve publics beyond one-way measurements of 'public opinion' and instead work to foster a reciprocity which enables them to act as collaborators in and coproducers of animal research policy, practice, and dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Multilevel modeling is considerably useful way to analyze hierarchical data sets. The main purpose of this paper is to apply multilevel analysis in animal science and also show that this modeling technique is appropriate to analyze this kind of data. Thus multilevel modeling technique is used to analyze the milk yield data which has hierarchical structures, sires nested within cows. As a result of the analysis done in this paper, it is obvious that multilevel modeling is needed to use for analyzing this data. This illustrates that it is a convenient way to use multilevel analysis for the data which obtained from animals when the data have hierarchies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Systems biology is a rapidly expanding field of research and is applied in a number of biological disciplines. In animal sciences, omics approaches are increasingly used, yielding vast amounts of data, but systems biology approaches to extract understanding from these data of biological processes and animal traits are not yet frequently used. This paper aims to explain what systems biology is and which areas of animal sciences could benefit from systems biology approaches. Systems biology aims to understand whole biological systems working as a unit, rather than investigating their individual components. Therefore, systems biology can be considered a holistic approach, as opposed to reductionism. The recently developed ‘omics’ technologies enable biological sciences to characterize the molecular components of life with ever increasing speed, yielding vast amounts of data. However, biological functions do not follow from the simple addition of the properties of system components, but rather arise from the dynamic interactions of these components. Systems biology combines statistics, bioinformatics and mathematical modeling to integrate and analyze large amounts of data in order to extract a better understanding of the biology from these huge data sets and to predict the behavior of biological systems. A ‘system’ approach and mathematical modeling in biological sciences are not new in itself, as they were used in biochemistry, physiology and genetics long before the name systems biology was coined. However, the present combination of mass biological data and of computational and modeling tools is unprecedented and truly represents a major paradigm shift in biology. Significant advances have been made using systems biology approaches, especially in the field of bacterial and eukaryotic cells and in human medicine. Similarly, progress is being made with ‘system approaches’ in animal sciences, providing exciting opportunities to predict and modulate animal traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of evidence-based zoo animal welfare science and the use of the 'five domains' have inspired zoos to increase animal welfare, particularly recognising positive welfare states. We tested whether natural biology (number of habitats, latitudinal range, sociality, body weight) or husbandry variables (mean age of group, group size and presence of extra enrichment) predict rates of positive welfare indicators (activity, play and engagement with the environment) in the Order Carnivora from collecting data from previously published articles. For each behaviour, species (n = 23) medians were analysed using phylogenetically informed mixed-model regression. Activity data were from 136 animals (n = 23 species), environmental interaction from 55 animals (n = 15 species) and play from 27 animals (n = 7 species). Biological variables did not predict rates of behaviour at a species or an individual animal level, but husbandry variables did. At an individual level, activity and play decreased in older animals. Activity and interaction with environment also increased with additional enrichment. This study is the first to quantify positive behaviours performed by zoo housed Carnivora and shows that they display indicators of positive welfare, if appropriate husbandry including environmental enrichment is provided. • Natural biological variables do not predict the rate of positive indicators of welfare in zoo housed carnivores. • Enrichment and age of the group predict the rate of activity, interaction with the environment and play behaviour in zoo carnivores. • When appropriate husbandry is provided, zoo housed carnivores display indicators of positive welfare. • This is the first paper to quantify positive behavioural indicators of welfare across multiple species. • Validated positive welfare indicators are needed across taxa to help track an overall net gain in welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New method for generating growth and degrowth models. • Generalization of the mathematical method proposed by Santos et al. (2019). • New unicompartimental model for fitting the Athens-Canadian Random Bred cockerels data. This paper aims to propose a new method for generating growth and degrowth models. To do so, the composition operation was added to the method proposed by Santos et al. (2019). From this new method, the model proposed by the composition of von Bertalanffy with Brody was created. The proposed model was compared to other unicompartmental models already described in the literature. The evaluated models were: Logistic, Brody, von Bertalanffy, Gompertz, Richards and the Proposed one. The following evaluators were used to define the best model.: the adjusted coefficient of determination R a j. 2 , mean squares residual (MSR), Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), Mean Absolute Deviation of the residues (MAD), Bayesian information criterion (BIC), Penalizing adaptively the Likelihood (PAL) and Predictive ability of the model (ρ). The Proposed model was the most adequate to fit to the Athens-Canadian male chickens data. Thus, this work contributed, adding the composition operation. Furthermore, the model generated by this method is effective for fitting the Athens-Canadian chicken breed data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To have a better contribution to the poultry production community, the Poultry Science Association founded journals including Poultry Science (PS) at 1921. Now, after 100 yr of publishing, PS ranks between the top 10 journals in the category of "agriculture, dairy, and animal science". One hundred years after publishing the first paper in PS, the poultry industry has been completely revolutionized. Hence, it will be interesting to establish scientometrics study of the PS development during the last century. Therefore, based on findings of the current study, among countries/authors' collaborations, future research fronts, and possibility of hot topics in the coming years may be predictable. Accordingly, a total of 22,451 articles were retrieved. For content analyses, according to the PS categorization for subject areas, 14 different subject areas were developed, including "behavior, breeding and quantitative genetics, education and extension, health and welfare, immunology, management and environment, metabolism and nutrition, microbiology and virology, modeling, molecular biology, physiology and anatomy, production, products, processing and marketing, and reproduction". Considering the 100-yr of PS, the most frequent subject area was "nutrition and metabolism" (14,109 articles), and "modeling" (1,114 articles) attracted less scholarly attention. However, considering the last decade (2011–2020), the most important subject area was "molecular biology" (1,420 of 2,466 articles; 57.58%), followed by "modeling" (544 of 1,144 articles; 48.88%). Moreover, the most frequent poultry species/strains were broilers (retrieved in 6,156 articles), followed by laying hens, turkeys, and quail. Considering collaboration of countries and researchers, it can be said that a total number of 108 countries contributed to PS, with the most prolific country being United States (with 9,421 articles; 43.16%), followed by China, Canada, the Netherlands, and Japan. Among the authors, Harms RH (287 articles), and Siegel PB (208) were the most prolific authors, and Siegel PB and Dunnington EA (71 articles) had more collaborations. To study keyword trends, including 3 time periods broilers was the central co-occurrent keyword, while the importance of chickens and turkeys declined during the time. Salmonella spp. was a constant representative of poultry microbiology during 100 yr. While "nutrition and metabolism" was the most important subject area, nutrition-related keywords (major items) were not concentrated and co-occurred with a variety of keywords from different subject areas. While "molecular biology" ranked first over the past decade, the importance of "nutrition and metabolism" should not be ignored. In fact, in recent years, molecular basis of the nutrition has been studied. In big-data era and due to developing the molecular biology technologies, it seems that using mathematical modeling and computational methodologies will increase and probably remains as one of the most attractive research areas for scientists at least in the upcoming future decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Artificial neural networks have shown to be a powerful tool for system modelling in a wide range of applications. In this paper, we focus on neural network applications to intelligent data analysis in the field of animal science. Two classical applications of neural networks are proposed: time series prediction and clustering. The first task is related to the prediction of weekly milk production in goat flocks, which includes a knowledge discovery stage in order to analyse the relative relevance of the different variables. The second task is the clustering of goat flocks; it is used to analyse different livestock surveys by using self-organizing maps and the adaptive resonance theory, thus obtaining a qualitative knowledge from these surveys. Achieved results show the usefulness of neural networks in two animal science applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]