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In the UK and Republic of Ireland, the European badger ( Meles meles ) is considered the most significant wildlife reservoir of the bacterium Mycobacterium bovis , the cause of bovine tuberculosis (bTB). To expand options for bTB surveillance and disease control, the Animal and Plant Health Agency developed a bespoke physical restraint cage to facilitate collection of a small blood sample from a restrained, conscious badger in the field. A key step, prior to pursuing operational deployment of the novel restraint cage, was an assessment of the relative welfare impacts of the approach. We used an established welfare assessment model to elicit expert opinion during two workshops to compare the impacts of the restraint cage approach with the only current alternative for obtaining blood samples from badgers in the field, which involves administration of a general anaesthetic. Eleven panellists participated in the workshops, comprising experts in the fields of wildlife biology, animal welfare science, badger capture and sampling, and veterinary science. Both approaches were assessed to have negative welfare impacts, although in neither case were overall welfare scores higher than intermediate, never exceeding 5-6 out of a possible 8. Based on our assessments, the restraint cage approach is no worse for welfare compared to using general anaesthesia and possibly has a lower overall negative impact on badger welfare. Our results can be used to integrate consideration of badger welfare alongside other factors, including financial cost and efficiency, when selecting a field method for blood sampling free-living badgers., Competing Interests: The authors declare that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. AC, JL, RC, MS and RD are employed by the APHA. SEB, NJB, TS and HG were remunerated as expert consultants to the APHA for their contributions to the two workshops. HG is employed as Chief Executive/Scientific Director of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) and is Joint Editor-in-Chief of Animal Welfare which is published by UFAW in conjunction with Cambridge University Press; he was not involved in the editorial processing of this paper. The funder of this work played no role in the study design, welfare assessment process and writing of the paper., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is commonly used to kill rodents. However, a large body of research has now established that CO 2 is aversive to them. A multidisciplinary symposium organized by the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office discussed the drawbacks and alternatives to CO 2 in euthanasia protocols for laboratory animals. Dialogue was facilitated by brainstorming sessions in small groups and a "World Café". A conclusion from this process was that alternatives to CO 2 were urgently required, including a program of research and extension to meet the needs for humane killing of these animals. The next step will involve gathering a group of international experts to formulate, draft, and publish a research strategy on alternatives to CO 2 ., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

The brain effortlessly recombines information about the shape, colour, motion and so on of objects in the visual scene, but how it does so is not known. Synchronous neuronal firing has seemed an attractive solution to this problem, but new results and theoretical insights cast doubt on its functional role.