IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 6
Scientists of animal welfare explain that quantitative production
performance can only tell us that quality and quantity of nutrients, the
water supply, and the microclimate are adequate, that the animal did not
contract any clinically-proven illnesses which influenced production yield,
and that there are possibly differences between animals. 7 It cannot tell us
if the environmental requirements of the animal for locomotion, resting,
comfort, social behavior, or predictability and control over its own
circumstances are met or not. Each of these affects the animal's welfare.
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Welfare needs of farm animals (including poultry) may be species-specific
(e.g., nestbuilding by sows that are about to farrow or dustbathing by
chickens to groom the feathers) or they may be needs common to all
animal species, such as free access to fresh drinking water, thermal
comfort, exercise, social contact, or the ability to behave normally and
interact meaningfully with their environment.
The Emergence of Animal Welfare Science
Scientific investigation into the welfare of farm animals began in earnest
following the 1965 publication of a report of the Technical Committee
appointed by the British government to inquire into the welfare of animals
kept under intensive livestock husbandry systems. 8 Chaired by an eminent
zoologist, F. Rogers Brambell, the "Brambell Committee" was the British
government's response to the public outcry that arose after the publication
of Ruth Harrison's Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry,
published in Great Britain in 1964. 9 Harrison documented the abuses that
were being visited on farm animals by the new, modern methods of
intensive confinement production and the implications of these new
methods for human welfare.
The Brambell Committee members received evidence from a broad range
of organizations and individuals and visited intensive animal production
units in the United Kingdom, Denmark, and The Netherlands. Committee
members considered each farm animal species separately and made
recommendations designed to safeguard its welfare.
The Brambell Committee members expressed concern over the lack of
freedom and environmental deprivation in which farm animals in factories
existed. Having seen many systems in which these basic freedoms were
not available to the animals, the committee specified that a farm animal at
minimum should have five basic freedoms. It should be able to: 1) turn
around; 2) groom itself; 3) get up with ease; 4) lie down with ease; and 5)
stretch its limbs. In addition, the committee stated its disapproval of "a
degree of confinement which necessarily frustrates most of the major
activities which make up an animal's behavior." 10 The Committee stressed
the importance of good husbandry to animal welfare. The Committee
recommended that scientists study animal behavior, as a way of learning