Meat business and public policy

Background: Indian Dairy Industry is vital to the growth of rural economy of India and employing good dairy farming practices is a sustainable approach to achieving this goal. Good dairy farming practices, according to FAO, are about implementation of effective and suitable practices on dairy farms so that the intended use of dairy products and by-products could be achieved while ensuring the farm business remains economically viable. The aim of the present study was to analyze the technological gap in adoption of good dairy farming practices among dairy farmers. Methods: Anand district was selected purposively. For the estimation of technological gap, six major components of dairy farming viz, animal health, hygienic milking, animal nutrition, animal welfare, environmental and socio-economic management practices of animals were used. Result: The study results indicate that nearly three-fifths of the respondents exhibited a medium level of overall technological gap in good dairy farming practices, followed by 27 per cent of respondents showing a low level of technological gap. Comprehensive awareness and training programs should be crafted to educate farmers about the importance and implementation of effective dairy farming practices, with a focus on animal health, hygienic milking, nutrition, welfare, environmental management and socio-economic aspects. Strengthening of extension services, financial incentives and formulation of regulatory frameworks is crucial in bridging the technological gap in good dairy farming practices.

ISVEE 14 Yucatan 2015 14th Symposium of the International Society for Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics

Despite the diversity of animal welfare definitions, most recognise the centrality of the feelings of animals which are currently impossible to measure directly. As a result, animal welfare assessment is heavily reliant upon the indirect measurement of factors that either affect what animals feel, or are effected by how they feel. Physiological and health orientated measures have emerged as popular metrics for assessing welfare because they are quantifiable, can effect and be affected by how animals feel and have merits regardless of their relationship to the feelings of animals. However, their popularity in animal welfare assessment has led to them having a disproportionate influence on animal management to the detriment of animal welfare in numerous instances. Here, the case is made that a tension exists between management that prioritizes aspects of care reflecting popular animal welfare metrics such as those relating to physical health, and management that emphasizes psychological wellbeing. By re-examining the relative merits of physical and psychological priorities in animal management, an alternate animal welfare paradigm emerges less tied to traditional welfare metrics. This paradigm theorizes about the possibility for an optimal animal welfare state to exist where managed animal populations provided essential psychological outlets but protected from key physical stressors routinely experienced in the wild, might experience higher levels of welfare than wild populations would routinely experience. The proposition that optimal animal welfare could theoretically be achieved in well managed and well designed captive environments challenges a widely held ethical perspective that captivity is inherently bad for animal welfare.

The purpose of this study was to determine if participation in a program addressing contemporary issues in animal agriculture had an effect on the students attitudes towards animal welfare, resource use, ' and food safety. The students in this study were participants in the Pennsylvania Governor's School for Agricultural Sciences (PGSAS). Within the five-week PGSAS program, students completed a two-week unit titled “Contemporary Issues in Animal Agriculture. " Three main issues were examined: animal welfare, resource use, and food safety as they relate to animal agriculture. The students ranked food safety as the primary concern with resource use second, and animal welfare third. Scholars with agricultural backgrounds rated specific issues as more beneficial to society than did scholars without agricultural backgrounds. Within the food safety area, both groups identified microbial contamination as the primary issue of concern. With regard to resource use, deforestation was ranked first, and in the animal welfare area, the pre-course issue of greatest concern was providing shelter. Upon completion of the course, within the animal welfare area, animal transportation became a topic of increased concern for both groups. Overall results showed decreased concern after the course by both groups of scholars.

Review: Animal husbandry and sustainable agriculture: is animal welfare (only) an issue of sustainability of agricultural production or a separate issue on its own?

This article uses the case of animal welfare to contribute to academic debates about audit and better regulation reforms designed to reduce administrative burdens and increase regulatory effectiveness. Combining desk-based policy document analysis, on-farm field visits, and 31 interviews with livestock farmers and animal health and welfare inspectors in England, it explores farmers' record-keeping practices and the contrasting role regulatory records are understood to play in assurance and good animal husbandry by farmers, regulatory inspectors, and veterinary experts. Farmers experience record-keeping as something they must do to satisfy external regulatory demands rather than anything that good farmers might themselves use in caring for their livestock. As a result they regard paperwork as burdensome and often fail to comply with record-keeping requirements. By contrast, inspectors and animal welfare experts frame record-keeping and analysis as central to good animal husbandry and to a properly anticipatory approach to managing animal health and welfare. Those veterinary-medical presumptions about farm practice inform both the design of specific animal welfare record-keeping requirements and their self-effacing conceit as being about peering over the farmer's shoulder to audit already existing records. Our findings highlight the dual tendency for the practice of regulatory record-keeping to become decoupled from both the formal requirements and from the quality of care that paperwork is meant to assure. Our analysis extends the critical literature on audit and regulation by drawing on the materialist tradition of science and technology studies to elucidate how this decoupling is shaped by the physical form and materiality of records themselves.

ABSTRACTBackground and Aim:Beef cattle production in Thailand is vital for food security and rural livelihoods, yet differences in farming systems raise concerns about animal welfare and health. This study aimed to evaluate the interactive effects of animal welfare and farming systems on cattle health outcomes, providing insights for sustainable smallholder production.Materials and Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted on 60 farms in Phayao Province, categorized as extensive, semi-intensive, or intensive. Animal welfare was assessed using an adapted Welfare Quality protocol with 41 indicators across five domains. Health outcomes were obtained from farm records and direct observations. Statistical analyses included Kruskal–Wallis tests, Dunn’s post hoc tests, Spearman’s rank correlation, and permutational multivariate analysis of variance with principal coordinate analysis.Results:Welfare scores differed significantly across systems, with intensive farms achieving the highest scores and extensive farms the lowest (p < 0.001). High-welfare farms showed reduced mortality, diarrhea, respiratory distress, bloating, parasitic infestation, and injuries compared with low-welfare farms (p < 0.05). Body condition score was strongly associated with welfare level (ρ = 0.68, p < 0.001). Multivariate analysis revealed significant effects of welfare level (R2 = 0.1787, p < 0.001), farming system (R2 = 0.1382, p = 0.0003), and their interaction (R2 = 0.2151, p = 0.0004) on cattle health. Semi-intensive farms with moderate welfare levels showed the most consistent and stable health outcomes.Conclusion:Animal welfare and farming systems interact to shape cattle health outcomes in Northern Thailand. Moderate welfare levels in semi-intensive systems offered balanced and consistent improvements, highlighting a scalable model for smallholders. The findings emphasize the need for context-specific welfare interventions, policy integration, and capacity-building initiatives to enhance both cattle health and farm sustainability.

Let’s all advocate for the dietetics profession

Influencing public policy through advocacy is an essential strategy used by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA) to achieve its health impact goals and programmatic objectives, which include helping all Americans lead healthier lives and reducing the incidence and consequences of cardiovascular disease and stroke. This advocacy work involves and engages the association's national officers, researchers, volunteer advocates, staff, and the general public and is a core strategy and key work process of the AHA/ASA. The organization's strategic approach to influencing public policy and leveraging its science and evidence base is not well known. This article provides the historical context of AHA advocacy, the organizational and legal structure under which these activities are carried out, the process used to develop the association's public policy positions and goals, the approaches used to achieve these goals, and the methods that have been developed to evaluate progress. This statement also examines the various tools and tactics that advocacy organizations use to influence public policy and specifically how the AHA/ASA conducts policy research, legislative and regulatory lobbying, coalition building and grassroots mobilization, and media advocacy. Finally, the ways that AHA/ASA evaluates the impact of its advocacy efforts are discussed, highlighting specific case studies and a brief summary of the association's 2010 to 2013 public policy agenda. The AHA's efforts to translate the science of cardiovascular disease and stroke into meaningful public policy began in earnest in the early 1980s. The association established a full-time office in Washington, DC, in early 1981 that was initially focused on increasing federal research funding administered by the National Institutes of Health.1 Other early policy priorities included tobacco control and support for programs that increased access to automated external defibrillators (AEDs), new clinical preventive benefits in the Medicare program, and nutrition policy. The commitment and involvement of …

The recent changes in Australia’s climate, the likelihood of further changes over the next decades to centuries, and the likely significant impacts of these changes on the Australian livestock industries, provide increasing urgency to explore adaptation options more effectively. Climate and atmospheric changes are likely to impact on the quantity and reliability of forage production; forage quality; thermal stress on livestock; water demands for both animal needs and for growing forage; pest, disease and weed challenges; land degradation processes; and various social and economic aspects including trade. Potential adaptation options are available for moderate climate changes, with these often being variations of existing climate risk management strategies. However, to date there are few Australian examples where these adaptations have been assessed systematically on any scale (e.g. enterprise, regional, whole of industry or national). Nor have many studies been undertaken in a way that (i) effectively harness industry knowledge, (ii) undertake climate change analyses in the framework of existing operational systems, or (iii) assess climate change in the context of other socioeconomic or technical changes. It is likely that there are limits to the effectiveness of existing adaptations under more severe climate changes. In such cases more systemic changes in resource allocation need considering, such as targeted diversification of production systems and livelihoods. Dealing with the many barriers to effective adaptation will require ‘mainstreaming’ climate change into policies covering a range of scales, responsibilities and issues. This mainstreaming will facilitate the development of comprehensive, dynamic and long lasting policy solutions. The integrative nature of climate change problems requires science to include integrative elements in the search for solutions: a willingness to apply integrated rather than disciplinary science and a strengthening of the interface with decision-makers.

Owing to its large size and ethnic, social, cultural and economic diversity, the Americas' production volume is set to make the region one of the world's leading providers of animal foodstuffs. Animal husbandry, transport and slaughter conditions vary from country to country in response to their differing climatic and geographic characteristics. This article examines the main drivers of animal welfare in the Americas, including the standards of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), legislation, codes of practice and advances in education, training, research and development. It recognises the important roles played by all the various stakeholders in changing perceptions of animal welfare by raising public awareness and promoting communication and cooperation as drivers of overall change in the Americas. Regional and international organisations, public and private-sector bodies, academia and non-governmental organisations have launched a number of initiatives with encouraging results. In 2009, the OIE established the Chile-Uruguay Collaborating Centre for Animal Welfare Research, which is now the OIE Collaborating Centre for Animal Welfare and Livestock Production Systems and has recently incorporated Mexico. The Collaborating Centre works closely with official OIE Delegates and the Focal Points for Animal Welfare of national Veterinary Services. The OIE Regional Animal Welfare Strategy for the Americas was adopted in 2012, under the coordination of the OIE Regional Representation for the Americas, as a guide for developing future policies based on a regional approach. The way to achieve cultural change for improving animal welfare, operator safety and the sector's profitability is through training and knowledge transfer. The results demonstrate that the joint efforts of all institutions and the active role of the Collaborating Centre have been most effective, as have the continuing education programmes implemented by universities.

The trajectory of Australia's foreign policy during the 2010s was set remarkably early in the decade. Over a period of just five months, beginning in April 2010, then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd abandoned his Emissions Trading Scheme, Rudd's Labour colleagues subsequently dumped him as leader in favour of Julia Gillard, and Hugh White's essay Power Shift: Australia's Future between Washington and Beijing was published.1 These events decisively framed three enduring and unresolved national questions that defined the past decade of Australian foreign policy: how should we respond to climate change?; are our political leaders still capable of delivering large-scale reform in the national interest?; and how do we navigate a world in which our key security partner and our key economic partner are not the same?

This report provides guidance to those interested in addressing concerns related to intensive animal farming, especially in European transition economies. Farmers that have invested in intensive methods often find they are very limited in their ability to improve animal welfare. Multiple players in the value chain, including industries that supply feed, farm animals, and housing tools and equipment have direct influence on the conditions animals are subjected to on farms.Two solutions are proposed: 1. Adopt the Swiss farm animal housing technology certification system that provides a flexible, data-driven approach to assess technologies before they are sold to farmers. 2. Transition to alternative farming practices that have short value chains, do not need large investments in fixed technologies, and allow farmers to access growing niche markets. The report has four main sections:1. INTRODUCTION: Current state of intensive farming. Large-scale intensive production methods cause serious problems.2. HOUSING TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT FOR ANIMAL FARMING: Influence of housing tools and equipment. Focus on production over animal welfare. Challenges faced by farmers. Marketing doesn't tell the whole story. Animal welfare: Regulations and production standards.3. SOLUTION 1: FARM HOUSING AND TECHNOLOGY CERTIFICATION. What is farm housing and technology certification? The Swiss farm technology certification system. How the system works. Balancing production goals and animal welfare. Farm technology certification: Benefits and challenges. Swiss incentives supporting farm animal welfare and technology improvements. Implementing the system in European transition economies. 4. SOLUTION 2: ALTERNATIVE PRODUCTION SYSTEMS. What are alternative production systems? Benefits and potential of alternative production methods. The logic behind alternative farming systems. Rethinking agriculutural economies and investments. Benefits and challenges of alternative farming systems. Incentives supporting alternative farming systems. Transforming agriculture in European transition economies.It also recommends practical actions that can be taken by governments, technical authorities, researchers, development organizations.

Moving from routine to risk-based official controls in slaughterhouses: Development of a scoring tool for the risk of non-compliance with animal welfare regulations

Climate change produces future risks and increasing climate variability produces current risks. Reducing disaster risk is addressed at the national level using approaches usually developed by the United Nations. These approaches, particularly in the developed world, address resilience building but practice is top-down and reactive. Effective resilience building requires a bottom-up participatory approach aimed at enhancing adaptive capacity. Using climate change and variability as a vehicle, this article posits that, without a shift in public policy, effective resilience could be jeopardised. Key to successful adaptation has been the willingness to learn how to develop a coherent set of principles that can inform a new approach to public policy for disaster management.