University Links, News & Events
University Links
‘University Links’ is a network of UFAW Links people, members and supporters at universities and colleges around the UK and overseas, reflecting both UFAW’s origins and the tremendous growth in interest in animal welfare science within these institutions.
The aims of the University Links scheme are to promote animal welfare science and the objectives of UFAW while providing a forum for the involvement of members and supporters.
For contact details, news and events for each institution, click on the institution’s name below
At present 51 academic institutions have UFAW Links:
- Anglia Ruskin University (ARU)
- Universtat Autonoma de Barcelona
- Berkshire College of Agriculture
- BOKU
- University of Bristol
- University of British Columbia
- University of Cambridge
- Cardiff University
- University of Chester
- Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
- University of Copenhagen
- University College Dublin
- University of Edinburgh
- Estonian University of Life Sciences
- University of Glasgow
- University of Goias
- University of Guelph
- Harper Adams University
- Hartpury College
- INRA
- Iowa State University
- ISPA - University Institute
- King's College London
- University of Lincoln
- University of Liverpool
- Massey University
- Moulton College
- University of Newcastle
- UNESP
- Universiry of Nottingham
- Nottingham Trent University
- Penn State University
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Plymouth
- University of Porto
- University of Prince Edward Island
- Queen Mary University of London
- University of Queensland
- Queen's University Belfast
- University of Reading
- Reaseheath College
- Royal Veterinary College
- Southampton University
- University of St Andrews
- University of Stirling
- Sussex University
- Unitec New Zealand
- Wageningen University
- University of Warwick
- Western University of Health Sciences
- Writtle College
Anglia Ruskin University
Contact: Dr Marian Bond, Dept of Life Sciences
Email: Marian.bond@anglia.ac.uk
ARU uses part of their link monies to support the 'The UFAW prize for the best undergraduate thesis on an animal welfare topic'’.
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Contact: Dr Xavier Manteca, Facultat de Veterinaria
Email: xavier.manteca@uab.es
Berkshire College of Agriculture
Contact: Katherine Williams
Email: KABundy@bca.ac.uk
Contact: Dr Christine Leb
Email: christine.leeb@boku.ac.at
University of Bristol
Contact: Dr David Main, Dept of Clinical Veterinary Science
Email: D.C.J.Main@bristol.ac.uk
Or Professor Mike Mendl, Dept of Clinical Veterinary Science
Email: Mike.Mendl@bristol.ac.uk
Staff and PhD students from University of Bristol’s Department of Clinical Veterinary Sciences took to the hills last month [10-12 April] to attend an unusual conference focusing on animal welfare and behaviour research. Click the link for further information http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2013/9367.html
See http://www.vetschool.bris.ac.uk/research/abw/ for further details.
The UFAW Links at Bristol, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow universities have joined forces and agreed to use some of their link monies to support an away ‘Walk and Talk’ weekend for their post-graduate students. During this weekend they will present their animal welfare work to their peers and discuss issues arising from it, get to know each other better and develop new contacts and collaborations. UFAW was happy to support this initiative because a trial last year, organised by the University of Bristol, had proved to be very successful and resulted in a fruitful exchange of ideas and techniques.
Bristol also uses part of their link monies to award prizes to undergraduates on the their BVSc and Animal Behaviour and Welfare BSC courses in recognition of the individual students achievements in the field of animal welfare science. Specifically, these are: the UFAW prize for best 1st year BVSc welfare & ethics group project, the UFAW prize for best 3rd Year VNPA welfare & ethics individual project and the UFAW prize for best dissertation on Animal Behaviour & Welfare degree.
Congratulations are extended to this year’s prize winners:
Andre Kortum (BVSc, year 1) Eleanor Haskey (BSc (Hons) Veterinary Nursing, year 3) and Peter Hiscox (BSc (Hons) Behaviour and Welfare).
University of British Columbia
Contact: Professor David Fraser, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Centre for Applied Ethics
Email: dfraser@interchange.ubc.ca
Contact: Dr David Williams, Veterinary Medicine and Pathology
Email: doctordlwilliams@aol.com
Cambridge has for many years had an Animal Welfare and Anthrozoology group which meets for a seminar each week and comprises staff members, postgraduate students and ourside interested parties. Our undergraduate welfare lectures are given by a number of staff members across the disciplines, showing how animal welfare aims to integrate into the clinical services covering large and small animal medicine and surgery as well as laboratory and exotic species. UFAW funds are used to aid funding of lectures outside the curriculum for undergraduate students as well as provide a book prize for the best essay on an animal welfare subject.
Contact: Dr Rob Thomas
Email: ThomasRJ@cardiff.ac.uk
University of Chester
Contact::Dr Lynne sneddon
Email: lynne.sneddon@chester.ac.uk
Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Contact: Professor Cristian Bonacic, Dept de Ciencas Forestales
Email: faunaaustralis@gmail.com
Contact: Professor Bjorn Forkman, Dept of Large Animal Sciences
Email: bjf@life.ku.dk
Contact: Dr Alison Hanlon, Veterinary Sciences Centre
Email: alison.hanlon@ucd.ie
The 42nd Congress of the International Society for Applied Ethology
(ISAE) will be held at O'Reilly Hall, University College Dublin (UCD)
from 5 to 9 August 2008. The key theme is 'Applied Ethology: Addressing
Future Challenges in Animal Agriculture'. The overall aim of the ISAE
2008 is to provide behavioural solutions to the challenges facing
animal agriculture. In essence, such solutions are more ethical, less
costly, less reliant on drugs and fossil fuels and therefore more
sustainable than other forms of intervention. In addition there are
six sub themes in the scientific programme:
- Applied ethology in organic and pasture-based production
systems
- Novel indicators of animal welfare
- Applied ethology and animal breeding
- Automated data collections systems
- Behavioural problems of domestic animals
For those who enjoy a more interactive experience, six workshops have
been introduced for ISAE 2008:
1. Usefulness of resting behaviour as a tool for assessing the
welfare of farm animals
2. Environmental enrichment: a valuable tool to improve the
welfare of zoo animals?
3. Promoting Applied Ethology Worldwide
4. The influence of genetics and breeding on farm animal welfare
5. Mother-offspring behaviour in polytocous animals
6. Intra- and inter-specific acoustic communication of farm animals
For more information and to register go to www.isae2008.com
We look forward to welcoming you to Dublin!
Alison Hanlon
UCD UFAW University Links person
University of Edinburgh
Contact: Dr Susan Jarvis
Email: Susan.Jarvis@sac.ac.uk
http://www.vet.ed.ac.uk/animalbehaviour/
Through the links scheme, UFAW is supporting a workshop organised by the Scottish Centre for Animal Welfare Sciences (SCAWS) on ‘Animal Athletes:
Welfare of Animals in Sport’, which has a particular emphasis on racehorses and greyhounds. The meeting will be held at The Moredun Research Institute Edinburgh on Wednesday 24th September 2008. Contact Lauren Kelly for further details (Laura.kelly@sac.ac.uk). A flyer can be found here.
The UFAW Links at Bristol, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow universities joined forces and agreed to use some of their link monies to support an away ‘Walk and Talk’ weekend for their post-graduate students. During this weekend they will present their animal welfare work to their peers and discuss issues arising from it, get to know each other better and develop new contacts and collaborations. UFAW was happy to support this initiative because a trial last year, organised by the University of Bristol, had proved to be very successful and resulted in a fruitful exchange of ideas and techniques.
Professor Peter Sandøe, Professor in Bioethics at The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen, was invited by UFAW link universities Edinburgh and Glasgow to give a seminar at the University of Glasgow on 25th April 2007. Professor Sandøe presented an animated and interesting talk on: ‘Veterinary treatment of companion animals – What are the ethical limits?’ There are many issues involved in this often difficult area and this informative presentation prompted a period of lively debate amongst students, lecturers and other interested parties who attended.
Professor Sandøe is Chairman of the Danish Ethical Council for Animals and president of The European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics and since 1990 the major part of his research has been within bioethics with particular emphasis on ethical issues related to animals, biotechnology and food production. He is committed to interdisciplinary work combining perspectives from natural science, social sciences and philosophy.
Estonian University of Life Sciences
Contact: Dr David Arney, Institute of Veterinary Medicine & Animal Sciences
Email: david.arney@emu.ee
The UFAW link scheme recently supported a ’Back to school’ project for students at the university. Students returned to their schools to give talks on animal welfare subjects that they were particularly interested in. The schools ranged from primary schools to an agriculture vocational college, and the students included a PhD student and a first year veterinary student. The feedback was that the talks were well received and successful, the students enjoyed doing them, and the schools were very pleased too. The talks addressed a range of subjects, see below, including the keeping of dogs as pets, animal welfare problems ecountered in intensive farming systems and fish tagging and conservation.
Name |
School |
Topic |
Katrin Tähepõld |
Torma Põhikool |
Keeping dogs as pets |
Epp Üleväino |
Hugo Treffneri Gümnaasium |
Experience as a volunteer at an animal shelter |
Anni Nool |
Põlva Ühisgumnaasium |
Problems in intensive farming (in terms of animal welfare)" (classes 10-12) and "Animal protection and welfare" (classes 7-8). |
Nadezda Savtsenko |
|
General animal welfare |
Kaisa Velström
|
Tallinn school no. 21 |
Zoo welfare |
Marko Kass |
Lüllemäe Elementary School |
Agriculture and welfare |
Triin Merisalu |
1 | Farm animal welfare and food quality |
Oksana Burimski |
Tartu Vene lütseum |
Fish tagging and conservation |
A report written by Kaisa Velström for the university newspaper can be found here, on page three,: http://www.emu.ee/userfiles/Ajaleht%20Maaylikool/2011/14aprill2011%20veebi.pdf
A translation of which is as follows:
Talk on the subject of welfare in Zoos to schoolchildren in Tallinn, Estonia.
I recently visited Tallinn School no 21 to talk to elementary school children on the subject of “Zoos in the 21st century”. I gave an overview about the birth of zoos and their development through time, giving them some interesting facts from the past and from today.
I started to get more interested in this subject when I got a chance to participate in a project with European Minks (Mustela Lutreola) in Tallinn Zoo.
It is important to emphasize the need of zoos in today`s world. I explained to them how zoos are working each day to improve and enrich the living environment of the animals at the maximum level possible. The resources that are needed to keep the animals from boredom and stress. This contributes to improvement of their overall welfare and the attempt towards providing them with as natural environment as possible.
One of the most important aspects is of course the maintenance of the genetic pool and ideally the restoration of a viable number of the species in situ.
I gave examples through history of how it has been managed to rescue some species from extinction. I tried to give examples from different zoos in the world and to explain that a zoo is not a place where animals are kept in captivity just for the fun of it.
I got the idea to give talks on animal welfare from my previous lecturer, David Arney. He also introduced me to the work of UFAW (Universities Federation for Animal Welfare) which is an independent registered charity that works to develop and promote improvements in the welfare of all animals through scientific and educational activity worldwide. UFAW promotes and supports developments in the science and technology that underpin advances in animal welfare. It also provides information, organises symposia, conferences and meetings, publishes books, videos, technical reports and the international quarterly scientific journal Animal Welfare. In 2009 I received an endowment from UFAW to participate in a conference in London- “ Primate Stress: Causes, responses and consequences” ( Primate Society of Great Britain). Overall, over time, I have come to feel more and more interested in animal welfare.
Kaisa Velström
4th year veterinary medicine student ( Estonian University of Life Sciences)
2011
Student from Estonian University of Life Science will visit Sri Lanka to cure dogs
.
Finnish third course veterinary student, Saara Hiippala, has received a stipend from Great Britain to cure homeless dogs in Sri Lanka.
I have been in Asia several times and wanted already, before going to study in Tartu, to go there to study homeless dogs, “ said Saara Hiippala. As there was a possibility to apply for this stipend, the young lady seized this.
At first she was looking for suitable clinic from Thailand and then from Bali, but finally she found in Sri Lanka a rescue centre, where homeless dogs with the parasitic disease ehrlichiosis were cured.
Dogs can acquire this disease from ticks, and if this disease is diagnosed at an early stage, it is curable with antibiotics during first month. If it is discovered later, the disease will usually end in death.
“In western countries it is possible to perform all necessary laboratory analyses to detect this disease, but in Sri Lanka it is difficult to diagnose, because it is possible there to use only microscope examination,” said Hiippala.
“I want to study possibilities for easier and more reliable diagnosis,” said Hiippala.
She was awarded a scholarship worth 1600 € from the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare for this project.
The purpose of this scholarship is to encourage students to develop their skills in animal welfare research, explained David Arney, who is Associate Professor in the Estonian University of Life Sciences, in the Institute of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences.
“It is the second time that a student from the Estonian University of Life Sciences has received this scholarship. This indicates high level of our students and increases our international reputation,” said Arney.
On 8th November, Prof. Hannu Saloniemi was invited to the Estonian University of Life Sciences, to give a talk entitled: Animal Welfare - from Science to Practice. This event was also a promotion of the UFAW link scheme to members of the university. An audience of over 70 students and staff attended the lecture which covered a history of animal science and welfare, particularly in Finland, and a report of the Research Centre for Animal Welfare at the University of Helsinki.
At the end of the talk there was an introduction to UFAW, and a discussion of the opportunities this opens up to students and staff to collaborate in both science and education, and promote animal welfare both in their own country and elsewhere.
University of Glasgow
Contact: Dr Dorothy McKeegan, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Email: dorothy.mckeegan@glasgow.ac.uk
The UFAW Links at Bristol, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow universities have joined forces and agreed to use some of their link monies to support an away ‘Walk and Talk’ weekend for their post-graduate students. During this weekend they will present their animal welfare work to their peers and discuss issues arising from it, get to know each other better and develop new contacts and collaborations. UFAW was happy to support this initiative because a trial last year, organised by the University of Bristol, had proved to be very successful and resulted in a fruitful exchange of ideas and techniques.
Professor Peter Sandøe, Professor in Bioethics at The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Copenhagen, was invited by UFAW link universities Edinburgh and Glasgow to give a seminar at the University of Glasgow on 25th April 2007. Professor Sandøe presented an animated and interesting talk on: ‘Veterinary treatment of companion animals – What are the ethical limits?’ There are many issues involved in this often difficult area and this informative presentation prompted a period of lively debate amongst students, lecturers and other interested parties who attended.
Professor Sandøe is Chairman of the Danish Ethical Council for Animals and president of The European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics and since 1990 the major part of his research has been within bioethics with particular emphasis on ethical issues related to animals, biotechnology and food production. He is committed to interdisciplinary work combining perspectives from natural science, social sciences and philosophy.
Contact: Professor Ekaterina Rivera, Biological Sciences Institute
Email: e.rivera@uol.com.br
http://www.congressofauna.com.br/secao.php?categoria=Apresentação
Contact: Dr Georgia Mason, Animal Sciences Department
Email: gmason@uoguelph.ca
On the 28th April, the inaugural Campbell Centre for Animal Welfare 'Research Day’ will be held (http://www.uoguelph.ca/csaw/index.htm). Talking at this meeting, with the support of the UFAW link scheme, will be Dr Ron Swaisgood (UCLA / San Diego Zoo) whose keynote speech will explore the role of stress reduction in the successful breeding of captive endangered species (esp. giant pandas in China). Anyone wishing to contribute an abstract to this meeting should contact Dr Georgia Mason. Click here for further details on submitting a manuscript.
Ron Swaisgood's is also talking at the OEEC 28-30th April 2008 ( http://www.uoguelph.ca/~oeec2008/)
Harper Adams University
Contact: Stephen Baugh, Animal Health & Welfare
Email: 00699580@harper-adams.ac.uk
Contact: Dr Mary Farrell, Animal Behaviour and Welfare
Email: mary.farrell@uwe.ac.uk
On Wednesday 23rd May 2012, Hartpury staff and students participated in the 7th Students’ Animal Welfare Conference supported by Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW), that took place this year at Moulton College. Gareth Hughes (BSc Bioveterinary Science), Sienna Jones (BSc Animal Behaviour and Welfare) and Kyle Smith (BSc Animal Science) gave oral presentations and made their lecturers proud with their performance. Kyle Smith receiving a commendation for her presentation on the impact of dietary carbohydrates on oral health in dogs. Eight other students presented posters based on their dissertations, all with interesting content and attractive presentation. Next year the conference will be hosted here at Hartpury, with students travelling from Moulton College and Writtle College to participate.
Hartpury hosted the 5th Student Animal Welfare Conference on Wednesday 28th of April 2010. Final year undergraduate students from Hartpury, Moulton and Writtle Colleges presented the findings of their undergraduate dissertation research on animal welfare. The Conference which was sponsored by the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare and Hartpury College was a great success, and the talks and posters presented were of a very high standard. The prize for the best talk was won by a Hartpury Equine Science student Caroline Hughes and Amie Reid from Moulton College won the prize for the best poster.
Hartpury’s level 1 FdSc and BSc (Hons) Animal Behaviour and Welfare students visit Bristol Zoo using UFAW funding
Students enrolled on Animal Behaviour and Welfare programmes at Hartpury visited Bristol Zoo during induction week. This visit was sponsored by the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare as part of the “link college” programme. UFAW is an independent registered charity that works to develop and promote improvements in the welfare of all animals through scientific and educational activity worldwide. The students toured the zoo and also had an education session on animal welfare at the Education Centre. They found the visit to be very beneficial and commented that it had enhanced their understanding of the welfare issues surrounding captive animals.
Contact: Dr Alain Boissy, Adaption & Social Behaviours
Email: alain.boissy@clermont.inra.fr
Contact: Dr Suzanne Millman, College of Veterinary Medicine
Email: smillman@iastate.edu
Contact: Dr Leonor Galhardo
Email: leonor.galhardo@mail.telepac.pt
Contact:
Email:
University of Lincoln
Contact: Dr Oliver Burman, Dept of Biological Sciences
Email: oburman@lincoln.ac.uk
Link monies help support Lincoln’s regular Behaviour and Evolution Research Group seminar series, which are open to all undergrads, research,academic staff and when applicable members of the public. Further details of these can be obtained here: http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/dbs/seminars.htm
Contact:Dr Carol Gray, School of Biological Sciences
Email: cagray@liverpool.ac.uk
Contact: Dr Ngaio Beausoleil, Institute of Veterinary, Animal & Biomedical Sciences
Email: N.J.Beausoleil@massey.ac.nz
Contact: Dr Wanda McCormick
Email: Wanda.McCormick@moulton.ac.uk
Contact: Dr Melissa Bateson, Institute of Neuroscience
Email: Melissa.Bateson@newcastle.ac.uk
The UFAW Links at Bristol, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow universities have joined forces and agreed to use some of their link monies to support an away ‘Walk and Talk’ weekend for their post-graduate students. During this weekend they will present their animal welfare work to their peers and discuss issues arising from it, get to know each other better and develop new contacts and collaborations. UFAW was happy to support this initiative because a trial last year, organised by the University of Bristol, had proved to be very successful and resulted in a fruitful exchange of ideas and techniques.
UFAW Link monies are also being used to support an Animal Health student conference run by the Agriculture Department for their third years students.
Contact: Dr Mateus Paranhos da Costa, Dept of Animal Science/Aline Sant'Anna
Email: mpcosta@fcav.unesp.br /ac_santanna@yahoo.com.br
University of Nottingham
Contact: Dr Lucy Asher, School of Veterinary Medicine & Science
Email: lucy.asher@nottingham.ac.uk
Contact: Dr Carol Hall, School of Animal, Rural & Environmental Sciences
Email: carol.hall@ntu.ac.uk
Contact: Professor Victoria Braithwaite, Center for Brain, Behavior & Cognition
Email: v.braithwaite@psu.edu
Contact: Dr James Serpell, School of Veterinary Medicine
Email: serpell@vet.upenn.edu
University of Plymouth
Contact: Dr John Eddison, School of Biological Sciences.
Email: J.Eddison@plymouth.ac.uk
Some UFAW link universities use part of their link monies to award prizes to undergraduates in recognition of their achievements in the field of animal welfare science. Congratulations are therefore extended to
James Kidd BSc Animal Science (Behaviour & Welfare). Achieved the highest aggregate mark across all modules.
Contact: Professor Paulo Vaz-Pires, ICBAS
Email: vazpires@icbas.up.pt
Contact: Dr Anna Olsson, Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology
Email:olsson@ibmc.up.pt
University of Prince Edward Island
Contact: Dr M S Cockram, Dept of Health Management
Email: mcockram@upei.ca
Queen Mary University of London
Contact: Dr Alan McElligott, School of Biological & Chemical Sciences
Email: a.g.mcelligott@qmul.ac.uk
Contact: Dr Andrew Tribe, School of Veterinary Sciences
Email: a.tribe@uq.edu.au
Contact: Dr Deborah Wells, School of Psychology
Email: d.wells@qub.ac.uk
Contact: Dr Caroline Rymer, School of Agriculture
Email: c.rymer@reading.ac.uk
Contact: Emily Jewell
Email: emilyj@reaseheath.ac.uk
Dr George Crossman delivered her talk to several groups of animal management
students (BSc Animal Behaviour & Welfare, FdSc Animal Management ( Behaviour & Welfare, and also Zoo Management) here at Reaseheath and all found her
talks very informative. She covered a range of issues relating to horse
welfare such as Spindles Farm case, transport issues, an overview of the
horse industry in the UK and the national equine Welfare Council.
Royal Veterinary College (RVC)
Contact: Dr Siobhan Abeyesinghe, Dept of Clinical Veterinary Sciences
Email: sabeyesinghe@rvc.ac.uk
Southampton University
Contact:
Email:
Contact: Dr Sue Healy, Schools of Biology and Pathology
Email: susan.healy@st-andrews.ac.uk
University of Stirling
Contact: Professor Hannah Buchanan-Smith, Dept of Psychology
Email: h.m.buchanan-smith@stir.ac.uk
During the 2009-10 academic year, Stirling used their UFAW link monies to:
1) Support the Behaviour and Evolution Research Group (BERG) seminar series.
Once again this seminar series has been enormously successful, and we held 21 seminars. As you will see in the attached programme, there was a huge variety of welfare-related topics, in a variety of species and settings. These included: human-elephant conflict mitigation in Africa; welfare and effects of cognitive training in chimpanzees in a zoo; effects of socialisation on laboratory-housed macaques; effects of tourist presence on welfare and health of wild gorillas in Africa; ageing in canine companions in homes! The BERG seminars often act as the first place for colleagues to present work that goes on to get published and attract considerable media attention. One example is the peaceful death of a chimpanzee at Blair Drummond Safari Park (Anderson, J.R., Gillies, A. and Lock, L (2010) Pan thanatology. Current Biology 20 (8), R349-R351 and e.g. see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/
article-1269400/Does-Pansys-death-prove-chimps-really-grieve.html) which raised public awareness of the emotions of our closest living relatives. It also has implications for how we treat animals when they are near the end – in this case a peaceful end of life with her group mates was the most humane option; separation and veterinary intervention (euthanasia) may have been stressful.
UFAW’s support of the BERG seminars provides a critical meeting point to maintain such links. With the UFAW sponsorship we were able to invite a number of outside speakers (eg, Jo Richardson head Keeper at Budongo Trail and Simon Girling the head vet from Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Edinburgh Zoo; Dr Mark Bowler, University of St. Andrews, Dr Keith Skeine, University of Dundee). Funds are also used to provide refreshments, encouraging longer discussion time! These seminars attract colleagues from Blair Drummond Safari Park, and Edinburgh Zoo, as well as staff, post-graduates and undergraduate students from several Scottish Universities. Due to our success, numbers attending our BERG meetings have grown considerably!
2) Award two undergraduate prizes of £50 each to Laura hall and Sophia Daoudi to reflect their sustained and important contributions to BERG meetings and their contribution to animal welfare through their research. Laura worked on a dissertation entitled “Assessing the impact of human interaction on the welfare and rehoming potential of shelter dogs (Canis familiaris)” and Sophia’s dissertation was entitled “The effects of visitors and weather on the use of indoor and outdoor enclosures by brown lemurs (Eulemur fulvus) at the Blair Drummond Safari Park”. Both these students are going to continue to postgraduate study related to animal welfare and conservation (as is last year’s UFAW award winner), indicating how successful we are in providing an environment conducive to motivating our best students to pursue careers in this field.
Contact: Professor Pete Clifton, Dept of Psychology
Email: pete@sussex.ac.uk
Contact: Mr Mark Farnworth, School of Natural Sciences
Email: mfarnworth@unitec.ac.nz
The following paper was possible thanks to the UFAW-Link fund.
AJ Keown, MJ Farnworth & NJ Adams (2011): Attitudes towards perception and management of pain in rabbits and guinea pigs by a sample of veterinarians in New Zealand, New Zealand Veterinary Journal, 59:6, 305-310
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00480169.2011.609477
This year, Unitec student Ellen Schubert received money from the UFAW link scheme in support of her project into the provision of care for rabbits in New Zealand and reasons for their adoption. A synopsis of this study can be found here.
Last year Unitec student Megan Young’s study into the impact of plastic pollution on the welfare of wild seabirds was supported. . A synopsis of her study can be found here.
We were lucky enough to receive a public lecture from Professor Alistair Lawrence in his whistlestop tour of the Antipodes. Student and public reaction was overwhelmingly positive and the lecture "Animal Welfare: Who cares and what do we do about it?" successfully brought together both specific research and major economic, environmental and ethical concerns which impact upon the field. It served to remind students that no scientific field stands alone and also to revitalise and embed their years of learning about Animal Welfare Science. It also had a small dose of celebrity affirmative action.
Unitec New Zealand thanks both UFAW and SAC for enabling this to
happen.
Contact: Dr Bas Rodenburg
Email: bas.rodenburg@wur.nl
Contact: Professor Laura Green, School of Life Sciences
Email: laura.green@warwick.ac.uk
Western University of Health Sciences
Contact: Dr Jose Peralta, College of Veterinary Medicine
Email: jperalta@westernu.edu
Contact: Jonathan Amory
Email: jonathan.amory@writtle.ac.uk
Photo: Dr Carlos de Luna, Dr Jarmila Bone and Dr Jonathan Amory with Rebecca Hunter (BSc Animal Management) and Yvonne Owen (PhD student) attend the BIAZA research conference at Chester Zoo July 2010.
Writtle College has a wide range of research projects in the field of animal welfare, studying zoo, companion and livestock species. The UFAW link money is currently used to support attendance (and sometimes hosting) the Student Animal Welfare Conference that is held annually between Hartpury, Moulton and Writtle College. It is also funds a prize for the best BSc dissertation project in the field of animal welfare.
In April, Writtle College, with assistance from the UFAW link scheme, hosted the sixth ‘Student Animal Welfare Conference’. This annual conference, which is for students attending Writtle, Hartpury and Moulton Colleges, featured talks and posters from undergraduate and postgraduate students at these institutions. The presentations covered a wide range of topics from all areas of animal welfare related to farmed livestock, horses, companion animals and zoo species. The plenary talk was given by Professor Don Broom of the University of Cambridge who spoke about “Awareness in domestic animals and our obligations to them”.
Prizes were awarded on the day and congratulations are extended to Harriet Stevens (Writtle College) for best oral presentation and Claire Parker (Moulton College) for best poster presentation.
For further details click here.
Prof. Don Broom with presenting students from Moulton and Writtle College
.
