Andrew Knight videos

4. Animal Welfare Issues

4. Animal Welfare Issues

48 videos Last updated on October 14, 2025
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1 Farming Animals 05:02

Farming Animals

Describes the origins of intensive animal farming, and the animal welfare harms and benefits this incurs. These include severe spatial and behavioural restrictions, widespread antibiotic use, and the subsequent development of antibiotic resistance.
2 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...
3 Farming Poultry 05:27

Farming Poultry

Summarises animal welfare concerns associated with the production of eggs, ‘meat’ chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and other poultry, including spatial and behavioural restrictions, and painful husbandry procedures.
4 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...
5 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 ...
6 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 ...
7 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...
8 UK Chicken Welfare: What should we know? What do we need to consider? 01:49:50

UK Chicken Welfare: What should we know? What do we need to consider?

Our A-Law Edinburgh Student Chapter held an event on May 24th, titled 'UK Chicken Welfare: What should we know? What do we need to consider?' The event featured speakers Professor Andrew Knight and Danielle Duffield, discussing chicken welfare and the current legal framework governing their prote...
9 Farming Pigs 05:34

Farming Pigs

Summarises animal welfare concerns associated with the farming of pigs. These include spatial and social restriction within barren environments, preventing the fulfilment of many natural behaviours pigs are highly motivated to perform, such as nest building. Painful husbandry procedures without a...
10 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': http://www.andrewknight.info/reports/...
11 How Should Pigs be Stunned at Slaughter? 05:35

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...
12 Farming Cows 05:35

Farming Cows

Summarises animal welfare concerns associated with the farming of dairy and beef cattle, and veal and bobby calves. These includes problems associated with genetic selection for very high milk productivity, and painful husbandry procedures.
13 BBC1 Panorama, A Cow's Life The True Cost of Milk 14Feb22 28:52

BBC1 Panorama, A Cow's Life The True Cost of Milk 14Feb22

BBC1_Panorama, A Cow's Life The True Cost of Milk 14Feb22 Most of us drink cow’s milk, but are we paying enough for it? Panorama investigates the dairy industry to find out whether animal welfare is being compromised in the drive to keep milk prices low. The film features disturbing undercover f...
14 Farming Sheep and Goats 05:32

Farming Sheep and Goats

Summarises animal welfare concerns associated with the farming of sheep and goats, in both developed and developing world environments. These include lameness, mastitis (inflammation of the udder) and painful husbandry procedures such as castration, tail-docking and mulesing. Animal welfare asses...
15 Fishing and Farming Fish 05:30

Fishing and Farming Fish

Summarises animal welfare concerns associated with commercial and recreational fishing, and fish farming. Topics include the ability of fish to feel pain, problems such as birth defects caused by genetic selection of farmed fish for rapid growth rates, barren and crowded fish farm environments, a...
16 Animal Transportation 05:26

Animal Transportation

Summarises animal welfare concerns associated with the transport of animals by sea, air and land. The greatest concerns are associated with the sea transport of livestock from Australia. This is explored in some detail. Welfare problems include those caused by failure to eat during shipping, poor...
17 Eating Animals 05:19

Eating Animals

Summarises some major animal ethics theories, with a particular application to the killing and eating of animals. These include Peter Singer’s utilitarianism and Tom Regan’s theory of animal rights. In contrast, Rogen Scruton views pastoralist farming as a complex moral good, situated between the...
18 Scientific Animal Use 05:29

Scientific Animal Use

Reviews the numbers of animals used for scientific or educational purposes worldwide, and explores the main drivers of increasing use – greater use of genetically modified animals, and large-scale chemical testing programmes. Covers the most common species used, their sourcing, categories of use,...
19 How Useful is Animal Research? 09:56

How Useful is Animal Research?

Systematic reviews have clearly demonstrated the limited human clinical and toxicological utility of animal experiments. This presentation briefly summarises this evidence, and reviews the reasons for the poor human predictivity of animal models. These include inherent differences between humans ...
20 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...
21 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...
22 Alternatives to Animal Research 09:47

Alternatives to Animal Research

Reviews the 3Rs – the Replacement, Reduction and Refinement of laboratory animal use. Key replacement examples include the use of structure-activity relationships and expert systems, cell cultures, the ‘human on a chip’, gene chips, and strategies to increase the predictivity and safety of human ...
23 Educational Animal Use and Alternatives 09:57

Educational Animal Use and Alternatives

Describes the use of animals within life and health sciences education, humane alternatives, and evidence concerning the educational effectiveness of humane teaching methods compared to harmful animal use.
24 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...
25 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...
26 Animals in Entertainment 06:16

Animals in Entertainment

Summarises welfare problems associated with the use of animals in film, television and advertising, with tourist exhibits, rides and activities, with circuses, marine mammal performances and dolphinaria, and with organised fighting of bears, cocks and particularly, dogs.
27 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 ...
28 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...
29 Hunting and Whaling 06:52

Hunting and Whaling

Describes the methods and welfare problems associated with hunting and trapping, as well as adverse effects on gene pools, conservation and public health. Explores morally significant characteristics of cetaceans, such as advanced cognitive capacities, social relationships, communication abilitie...
30 Companion Animals: Common Welfare Problems 08:52

Companion Animals: Common Welfare Problems

Reviews companion animal welfare problems, including neglect, problem behaviours, impacts on the human-animal bond and exotic animal ownership. Pet overpopulation topics include ‘puppy mills’, feral cats and population management strategies. Hereditary conformational disorders are discussed, as a...
31 The Social Status of Companion Animals 06:05

The Social Status of Companion Animals

Explores the social status of traditional and exotic companion animals, and of working animals. A few animals have had successful careers in politics – these are reviewed, along with political parties for animals. The moral opposition to companion animal ownership of animal rights theorists such ...
32 Animal Forensics Myiasis Flystrike 05:11

Animal Forensics Myiasis Flystrike

Flystrike (myiasis) affects both wild and domesticated animals such as livestock, and companion animals such as rabbits. Risk factors include injuries, illnesses such as diarrhoea, and neglect. This video covers types of flystrike (obligative, facultative and accidental), fly species involved and...
33 Animal Forensics - Forensic Entomology 07:13

Animal Forensics - Forensic Entomology

Forensic entomology is the application of insects, and sometimes other arthropods, within a legal context. It may use factors such as insect type and life cycle stage, and ambient temperature records, to prove time periods such as the minimum time since the death of an animal (or person), or sinc...
34 Equine Welfare 10:22

Equine Welfare

Summarises the welfare concerns of horses and other equines, used within conventional and endurance racing, dressage and other equestrian events, as urban carriage horses, and as working animals within the developing world.
35 Birds and Exotic Animals 08:16

Birds and Exotic Animals

Summarises welfare concerns experienced by birds and other exotic animals due to human activities. These include habitat destruction, human-wildlife conflict, hunting, trapping, pollution, the impacts of researchers, and the legal and illegal trades in wildlife. Death rates during transit are oft...
36 Wildlife and Welfare: the Need for Change 05:37

Wildlife and Welfare: the Need for Change

Exploring the negative relationships between human activity/population growth and welfare of wildlife. Should legal concepts of animal welfare be expanded to include wild-living animals?
37 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...
38 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...
39 Zoos 08:30

Zoos

Modern zoos fulfil multiple functions, including entertainment, conservation, education, animal rehabilitation and release, employment and profit generation. This video summaries the historical origins of zoos, and the evolution of enclosure design and animal husbandry. The increasing focus of mo...
40 Marine Animals 06:16

Marine Animals

Describes the decline of global fisheries, and species such as artic fish and sharks that are particularly threatened. Also described are the adverse impacts that may be experienced by dolphins during dolphin encounters designed for tourists.
41 Plant Based Diets 09:44

Plant Based Diets

The top causes of human mortality are cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. One in five deaths globally are caused by an unhealthy diet. A diet comprised of whole plant foods has been shown to be the most healthy choice for people, animals and the planet as a whole. This video explores the...
42 Plant Based Diets and Cancer 07:22

Plant Based Diets and Cancer

The top cause of premature human death in the UK and many other countries is cancer, particularly of the lung, breast, bowel and prostate. However, over 40% of cancers are preventable by healthy lifestyle choices. Animal products such as meat and dairy substantially increase cancer risks because ...
43 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...
44 Brexit and Farm Animal Welfare 10:59

Brexit and Farm Animal Welfare

Most laws governing farm animal husbandry, transport and slaughter originate from the EU, although to date these have been shaped by the UK as an EU member. After Brexit, EU treaties and new Directives would no longer apply to the UK, although existing national legislation such as the UK Animal W...
45 Breed Specific Legislation 14:03

Breed Specific Legislation

Breed-specific legislation (BSL) was introduced into the UK with the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991, since amended) and others, following several high profile dog attacks. It banned (with certain exemptions) the Pit Bull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino and Fila Brasileiro. However, these breeds ...
46 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...
47 Disaster Management 07:02

Disaster Management

Animal welfare disasters can result from disease outbreaks, wars, famines, extreme weather events, failures of power, infrastructure or machinery, and from chronic pet overpopulation. Responses are often crisis driven and poorly coordinated, and focused on people, with animals little considered. ...
48 Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss 13:36

Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss

We are currently living through the sixth mass extinction since fossil records began. This video describes previous mass extinction events and the causes of the current one - mainly habitat destruction for livestock production, pollution and climate change. Some 1/3 of all species are expected to...