04:26
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 Zealand Law Foundation, has revealed a substantial gap between the overarching standards of animal welfare prescribed by the Animal Welfare Act 1999 and the standards that are provided for in its codes of welfare and regulations.
The report will be launched at a parliamentary event on Wednesday 22 Febru...
02:58
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 establishment of a successful CSL, based on our experiences in establishing and directing the state of the art CSL at Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine.
03:42
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, many factors relate to the design of the tracks and races themselves, and are preventable. My report 'Injuries in Racing Greyhounds' at https://AndrewKnight.info (see 'reports'), describes the main causes of injuries and deaths, and the ways in which these risks could be minimised.
03:44
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 significant differences overall, between animals fed vegan or meat-based diets (conventional or raw meat). Our results indicate that vegan pet foods are generally at least as palatable to dogs and cats as conventional meat or raw meat diets, and do not compromise their welfare, when other welfare determinan...
04:35
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 recent study explored in detail, steps taken by pet food manufacturers to ensure the nutritional soundness and quality of pet foods. Most manufacturers, and especially those producing plant-based pet foods, had good standards overall. Our full study is: Knight A and Light N. (2021). The nutritional so...
06:03
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. The most common reasons provided by educators for not using humane alternatives, were: 1) the perceived ‘necessity’ of using a living animal for ‘proper’ learning, and 2) a belief that alternative were not adequate. However, these personal beliefs of some educators, conflict with the best available e...
01:05:12
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 European, American, New Zealand and RCVS -recognised Veterinary Specialist in animal welfare and related fields. He has around 150 academic and 80 popular publications, and an extensive series of YouTube videos and several websites (including https://www.sustainablepetfood.info), on plant-based companion a...
05:47
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 year. We examined seven general indicators of ill health: unusual numbers of veterinary visits, medication use, progression onto a therapeutic diet after initial maintenance on a vegan or meat-based diet, guardian opinion and predicted veterinary assessment of health status, percentage of unwell dogs a...
04:12
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 impacts of such modern cage systems on chicken welfare. Accordingly, we systematically reviewed studies assessing the welfare of meat chickens kept in either modern cage systems or littered barns. Overall, 23 studies were reviewed, and none of the experimental studies reviewed incorporated a full behav...
05:05
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 feline health disorders was studied. Forty two percent of cats fed meat, and 37% of those fed vegan diets suffered from at least one health disorder. 15 disorders were most common in cats fed meat, and seven most common in cats fed vegan diets. Access our study at: Knight A, Bauer A, Brown H (2023) Ve...
05:17
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 food consumed by people, I was able to calculate these benefits. They are game-changingly large. Vegan diets for dogs, cats and people, would save many billions of livestock animals from slaughter annually, would eliminate vast quantities of greenhouse gases, pesticides and other damaging emissions, w...
04:08
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-caught or farm-raised seafood in the near future. This might take pressure off aquatic ecosystems and mitigate severe animal welfare concerns within the seafood industry; as numerous underwater species are recognised to be pain-perceiving or even sentient, many common rearing, catching, transporting an...