Different animal welfare orientations towards some key research areas of current relevance to pastoral dairy farming in New Zealand

AbstractThe New Zealand dairy industry needs to meet public expectations regarding animal welfare in order to retain the freedom to operate and achieve market success. Three key orientations towards animal welfare assessment have been identified, namely biological functioning, affective state and natural living, the last two of which are more recent foci for societal concern. Biological functioning was the first and most-studied aspect of animal welfare and continues to be important, but now the contribution of affective state to animal well-being is emphasised much more. Natural living, or naturalness, has received relatively less attention from animal welfare science. It is proposed that increasing the use of naturalness as a contextual reference point for considering species-specific behavioural expressions of affective state will enhance its inclusion in animal welfare assessment. Nevertheless, all three orientations need to be considered in order to evaluate the significance of welfare research findi...