Andrew Knight videos

1. Recent Research

1. Recent Research

34 videos Updated on August 20, 2026
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1 Nutritional Soundness of Vegan and Meat-based Pet Foods 04:03

Nutritional Soundness of Vegan and Meat-based Pet Foods

This video is adapted from 10.3390/ani16142232 Based on laboratory analyses of both vegan and meat-based pet foods, some studies have suggested pet food samples of either type to be nutritionally sound, while others have demonstrated nutritional flaws. However, a more systematic evaluation of th...
2 Can Dogs And Cats Digest Plant-Based Pet Foods? 03:45

Can Dogs And Cats Digest Plant-Based Pet Foods?

Can dogs and cats digest plant-based pet food? This video briefly summaries my study on this topic in Animals Thirty-one relevant studies were reviewed. The digestibility of vegan and vegetarian diets was consistently high, and broadly comparable to that of conventional meat-based diets. These st...
3 Sustainable Pet Diets: A Leading Effective Altruism Issue 03:49

Sustainable Pet Diets: A Leading Effective Altruism Issue

This video is adapted from 10.3390/ani16030460 - https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/16/3/460 Animal-based ingredients dominate dog and cat food, but growing concerns about animal welfare and the environment are increasing interest in more sustainable options, such as plant-based and cultivated meat-...
4 How Much Do Chickens Suffer When Gassed With CO2 03:39

How Much Do Chickens Suffer When Gassed With CO2

Most chickens slaughtered in the UK are now gassed to death using high concentration CO2, including from RSPCA-certified farms. When undercover footage of gassed chickens emerged, an RSPCA spokesperson stated in The Independent that “the birds in the footage were already unconscious and were not ...
5 How Much Does Animal Farming Contribute to Climate Change 04:16

How Much Does Animal Farming Contribute to Climate Change

A summary of our 2025 study https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/22/3256 on the contributions of animal agriculture to climate change and broader environmental harms. The findings suggest that, globally, animal agriculture accounts for 12 - 20% of greenhouse gas emissions annually, and probably more...
6 Consumer Acceptance of Sustainable Dog Food 03:36

Consumer Acceptance of Sustainable Dog Food

A summary of our 2025 study https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/20/2988 on the consumer acceptance of sustainable – especially vegan – diets for dogs. This survey of 2,639 dog guardians worldwide revealed that 43% of those feeding meat-based diets would realistically consider more sustainable diets...
7 Consumer Acceptance of Sustainable Cat Food 03:41

Consumer Acceptance of Sustainable Cat Food

A summary of our 2025 study https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/20/2984 on the consumer acceptance of sustainable – especially vegan – diets for cats. This survey of 1,380 cat guardians worldwide revealed that 51% of those feeding meat-based diets would realistically consider more sustainable diets...
8 Meat Based Versus Vegan Pet Food: Environmental Sustainability 04:19

Meat Based Versus Vegan Pet Food: Environmental Sustainability

What are the environmental impacts of vegan vs. meat-based pet diets? In Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, Billy Nicholles and Andrew Knight considered the meat- and plant-based ingredients within commercial pet foods, and the role of animal byproducts. They even considered emerging alternat...
9 How Should Pigs be Stunned at Slaughter? 04:26

How Should Pigs be Stunned at Slaughter?

Billions of pigs are slaughtered for food annually, and high concentration CO2 within controlled atmospheric stunning (CAS) systems is one of the most common methods used to stun pigs unconscious at the time of slaughter. However, a high concentration of CO2 is aversive, and creates severe animal...
10 How Much do Vegan Diets Improve the Health of Dogs? 06:18

How Much do Vegan Diets Improve the Health of Dogs?

In 2022 we compared health outcomes between 2,536 dogs fed meat-based and vegan diets (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0265662). In this further study we controlled for differences in medically-relevant factors, including age, sex, neutering status, breed size ...
11 Fox Control Methods Animal Welfare and Ethical Implications 04:45

Fox Control Methods Animal Welfare and Ethical Implications

Control methods are applied worldwide to reduce predation on livestock by European red foxes (Vulpes vulpes). Lethal methods are intended to kill foxes and can inflict suffering. Non-lethal methods can also inflict suffering and can unintentionally lead to death. Moral debate about the animal wel...
12 Should Tigers Be Used Within Travelling Circuses? 07:48

Should Tigers Be Used Within Travelling Circuses?

This study summarises a systematic review of 42 pieces of scientific literature, including virtually all animal welfare studies of captive tigers within circuses and zoos, published by 2023. After analysing the effects on each of the recognised five domains of animal welfare: nutrition, physical ...
13 The Welfare of Backyard Chickens 04:35

The Welfare of Backyard Chickens

Chickens may be the third most common pet in many countries; however, little is known about their welfare status or the human–chicken relationship. Hence, using 2000+ questionnaire responses, this study collected the most comprehensive and holistic dataset to date on owners’ care-taking practices...
14 Influenza Risks From Pig and Poultry Farms 04:29

Influenza Risks From Pig and Poultry Farms

Most new and emerging human diseases come from animal populations, and among these, viruses - especially influenza viruses - are the most dangerous. Viral transmission and mortality can be very high. Influenza pandemics have previously killed many millions of people. Pigs and poultry are readily ...
15 Cell Based Seafood: Japanese Consumer Views 04:08

Cell Based Seafood: Japanese Consumer Views

Cell-based seafood is produced by taking cells from live sea creatures and cultivating them in appropriate growth media in bioreactors. Identical to conventional tissue at the DNA level, cell-based products appear to be safe for human consumption and might present a viable alternative to wild-cau...
16 Could Vegan Pet Food Help Save the Planet 05:17

Could Vegan Pet Food Help Save the Planet

What would the environmental benefits be, if the world’s dogs, cats and people all consumed vegan diets, and how many additional people or pets could be fed with the food energy saved? How much livestock consumption is due to pet food? After analysing pet food ingredients in detail, as well as fo...
17 Are Vegan Diets Good for Cats 05:05

Are Vegan Diets Good for Cats

We studied 1,369 cats fed vegan or meat-based pet food, for at least one year. Cats fed vegan diets had better health outcomes for each of seven general health indicators studied. Collectively, this represents a strong and consistent trend. Additionally, the prevalence of 22 of the most common fe...
18 Meat Chickens and Colony Cages 04:12

Meat Chickens and Colony Cages

Over 70 billion chickens are slaughtered globally each year. Almost all are meat breeds, typically housed in very large barns with a litter floor. Recently however, modern cage systems have been developed which provide very limited space and stack several tiers high. There is debate about the imp...
19 Are Vegan Diets Good for Dogs? 05:47

Are Vegan Diets Good for Dogs?

Vegan dog food is less damaging to the environment, and to the welfare of animals processed into pet foods. But – are vegan diets good for dogs? To test this, we collected data on 2,536 dogs fed a conventional meat (1,370 = 54%), raw meat (830 = 33%) or vegan (336 = 13%) diet for at least one yea...
20 Should Cats and Dogs go Vegan? - Professor Andrew Knight, University of Winchester 01:05:12

Should Cats and Dogs go Vegan? - Professor Andrew Knight, University of Winchester

Andrew Knight is Professor of Animal Welfare and Ethics, and Founding Director of the University of Winchester Centre for Animal Welfare, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Environment and Science at Griffith University, Queensland. An experienced cat and dog veterinarian, he's also a Europea...
21 Educational Animal Use Within Europe 06:03

Educational Animal Use Within Europe

Thousands of alternatives to harmful animal use are now available. Why, then, are well over 100,000 animals used annually for educational purposes, within the EU alone? To find the answers, we studied the publicly available summaries of scientific and educational animal use in EU member states. T...
22 Pet Food Manufacturing 04:35

Pet Food Manufacturing

Plant-based pet foods are rapidly developing, driven by distrust of conventional pet foods, and concerns about their impacts on pets, farmed animals, and the environment. But are plant-based pet foods nutritionally sound? Do consumers really need to be worried about conventional pet foods? Our re...
23 Vegan Pets Are Just as Happy with Their Meals 03:44

Vegan Pets Are Just as Happy with Their Meals

Some claim vegan pet food may be less palatable, or may compromise animal welfare. But are such claims actually true? In 2020 we surveyed dog or cat guardians asking about behaviours displayed by their pets at meal times. Analysis of the behaviour of 2,308 dogs and 1,135 cats revealed no signific...
24 Greyhound Racing 03:42

Greyhound Racing

Many thousands of greyhounds continue to be seriously injured whilst racing, and many of these are killed. Injuries and deaths are partly due to the speeds at which greyhounds race. They are the fastest breed of dog, able to maintain average running speeds of around 40 mph (65 km/h). However, man...
25 Creating a Clinical Skills Laboratory for teaching surgical and clinical skills 02:58

Creating a Clinical Skills Laboratory for teaching surgical and clinical skills

A Clinical Skills Laboratory (CSL) is important for teaching surgical and medical skills to veterinary and medical students. Our recent article at http://rebrand.ly/2018/CSL (also at https://AndrewKnight.info) and summarised here, describes steps and considerations important during the establishm...
26 NZALA Report - inconsistencies between the Codes and the Act 04:26

NZALA Report - inconsistencies between the Codes and the Act

Farmed Animal Welfare Law in New Zealand: Investigating the gap between the Animal Welfare Act 1999 and its delegated legislation. The New Zealand Animal Law Association is excited to release a research report which focuses on farmed animals in New Zealand. This report, funded by the New Zeala...
27 The Green Protein Report 03:38

The Green Protein Report

There are around 160 million farmed animals based in New Zealand. The heavy national footprint of animal agriculture within New Zealand has had devastating impacts for its environment, public health, and animal welfare. This report describes how, and why, a transition to a cleaner, greener, plant...
28 Wildlife Trade - Confiscated Animals 03:26

Wildlife Trade - Confiscated Animals

In response to the illegal wildlife trade, wild animals are often seized, confiscated, and subsequent managed. Unfortunately, confiscated live animals often experience substandard care. We interviewed 18 experts from seven countries in Southeast Asia, to investigate barriers to appropriate care a...
29 Efficacy of Alternatives to Educational Animal Use 05:11

Efficacy of Alternatives to Educational Animal Use

Harmful animal use in education and training remains widespread among life and health sciences disciplines. Humane teaching alternatives include ethically-sourced cadavers, models, mannequins, mechanical simulators, videos, computer and virtual reality simulations, and supervised clinical and sur...
30 Animal Research and Depression 05:17

Animal Research and Depression

Can animal experiments help cure depression? Unfortunately not, because animal research contributes little to human medical developments in this field. Here, we summarise our studies of the contributions of different forms of research to advances in depression understanding and treatment. Our ful...
31 Sow farrowing crates NZ 01:39

Sow farrowing crates NZ

Summarises the animal welfare problems experienced by sow confined within farrowing crates. Introduces my 2018 report 'Uncaging New Zealand's Sows: Scrutinising New Zealand’s Farrowing Crates': https://www.andrewknight.info/reports/sow-farrowing-crates-new-zealand/
32 Supermarket Chicken and Pandemics 05:35

Supermarket Chicken and Pandemics

A quick introduction to our report examining the animal welfare problems and disease risks created by intensive meat chicken farming, including the risks of future global pandemics. It also highlights action supermarkets can take to address these risks. The full report is: Open Cages, Knight A ...
33 Primate Research 04:44

Primate Research

Should we experiment on non-human primates (NHPs)? A short introduction to the harms and benefits of such research, and a call for greater protection of NHPs. Introduces our article: Carvalho, C., Gaspar, A., Knight, A., and Vicente, L. (2019). Ethical and scientific pitfalls concerning laborator...
34 Animal welfare in New Zealand 04:43

Animal welfare in New Zealand

Governmental and industry representatives have repeatedly claimed that Aotearoa New Zealand leads the world on animal welfare. Unfortunately, however, it is clear that substantial welfare problems remain prevalent within the farming of all main species within New Zealand. My article at https://re...