UFAW 2022 recap

This year's UFAW (University Federation for Animal Welfare) international conference is back in person in Edinburgh. I am very happy to be able to visit my old, beautiful city and to take part in this important annual conference in animal welfare, especially after 2 years of the pandemic. One of the few benefits now going through a pandemic for the academic circle is that most conferences start to realise the importance of making information more accessible through online/hybrid format and it can help reach more people geographically and people who may not be financially privileged to attend international conferences. I published previously also sharing our experience at ISAE (International Society for Applied Ethology) in hosting our fist ever virtual meeting back in 2020.   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2021.105369 (Open access!)

The theme of the UFAW conference this year is "Advancing Animal Welfare Science." All four keynote talks share a similar theme, how to improve animal welfare science, its quality, its methods of measurement, its response to the growing demand in animal production and its role in policy making. Hanno Würbel's talk focused on the process of making science, same issues that have been mentioned in many of the events I attended this year, and how to make science more relevant, rigorous, responsible, reproducible, and valid. Bas Rodenburg gave a more promising future outlook in terms of the increasing demand on food, which, although not necessarily having to translate into more animal production, can still put pressure on higher intensification of farm animals. The case of the Netherlands seems to give an example of an integrated approach to include multiple stakeholders like farmers and consumers to make the transition to more humane animal husbandry possible. 

Cathy Dwyer's talk compels us to think more about what science's role is in political decision making, but I found it more useful to reflect on mapping the network of policy making and to rethink science's place in relation to other knowledges and interests exerted by other groups of stakeholders. It is not enough to just think science should be the sole driving force behind policy changes because it is objective. Melissa Bateson took us back to the micro level of science in making and how a simple indicator of body weight may be more complicated than we think and how relying on one measure of body weight changes may not tell us the full picture of animals' welfare. 

There were so many other talks that are interesting, including humane methods of rat management, training pigs to habituate to blood sampling to reduce stress, brain health, and of course the inspiring talk delivered by the Winner of the UFAW Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Animal Welfare Science, Jane Hurst, sharing her life experience in improving laboratory animal welfare through a change in handling method. Too many talks to record one by one here but gladly all videos in the conference are now available on the UFAW YouTube channel.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbUffsX9AlWC0AlljmZmE9Q/videos

One last thing I should mention is the debate forum before the conference concluded. The topic under debate is whether food labelling is the way forward to improve farm animal welfare. This linked by to one of the topics also in the ONE conference a week ago, where it was given quite a high hope. The debate put through by the panelists and the participants alike was vibrant, sharp, and at times conflicting and challenging. It is thoroughly enjoyable. The arguments on both sides  are briefly summarised by the following table, with each themes matched on both sides:

This is by no means exhaustive, only based on my notes. I'm leaning towards the supporting side as my own experience from home has been positive with the minimum egg production system labelling, which becomes a driver of consumer behavioural changes and spread the basic knowledge of different laying hen production systems. We will have to see if EU will indeed develop a EU-wide animal welfare labelling system which can further unifies between countries. I will welcome this but I can imagine it will take some cross-country efforts to make it happen. 

 I learned a lot from this trip, and will need to catch up on the HSA conference recordings. Next stop is ECBB in two weeks!