Animal handling and welfare

The African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV) is a DNA virus of the Asfarviridae family, Asfivirus genus. It is responsible for massive losses in pig populations and drastic direct and indirect economic impacts. The ever-growing handling of ASFV pathological material in laboratories, necessary for either diagnostic or research activities, requires particular attention to avoid accidental virus release from laboratories and its detrimental economic and environmental effects. Recently, the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/689 of 17 December 2019 repealed the Commission Decision of 26 May 2003 reporting an ASF diagnostic manual (2003/422/EC) with the minimum and supplementary requirements for ASF laboratories...

Animal welfare is a multidimensional concept that includes several physical and psychological parameters of the animal. The aim of this study was to assess animal welfare during transportation and in Slovenian beef, pork, and poultry slaughterhouses. A questionnaire was used for this study. Several parameters of animal welfare were rated on a 5-point scale, such as health status, animal behavior, lairage or transport vehicle conditions, and driver regulation compliance. The scale was also used for the second part of the study...

Changes in body mass are a key indicator of health and disease in humans and model organisms. Animal body mass is routinely monitored in husbandry and preclinical studies. In rodent studies, the current best method requires manually weighing the animal on a balance which has at least two consequences. First, direct handling of the animal induces stress and can have confounding effects on studies. Second, the acquired mass is static and not amenable to continuous assessment, and rapid mass changes can be missed...

The use of electrical equipment for herding and moving livestock (electric batons) or for stunning animals before slaughter (electric stunners) is widespread in the livestock and meat industries worldwide. The use of these equipment is restricted to specific procedures and/or exceptional circumstances that justify their rational use. However, these restrictions can be underestimated or disregarded due to ignorance, inexperience, incompetence or irresponsibility on the part of users, resulting in pain and suffering to the animals and, in some cases, electro-thermal injury...

Keeping tunnels in the home cages of mice used in research appears to both reduce handling-related stress and provide environmental enrichment. However, for mice that have surgical implants that extend beyond their body, having tunnels in the home cages could engender concerns for their welfare, including the possibility of them becoming stuck in the tunnel. The goal of this study was to determine how mice with different sizes of cranial implants interacted with a tunnel in their home cage. We used male and female mice with a C57BL...

Large herbivores are subject to handling and social stress in captivity. These may affect blood biochemical values, which motivated this research. Twelve healthy common eland (Taurotragus oryx) were monitored for 12 months. The animals were handled monthly, and blood samples were collected. Samples from every second month were analysed for 14 blood biochemical parameters. Temperament throughout the handling, as the summation of various behavioural responses, was calculated as a proxy of the stress generated during handling...

Current mouse handling methods during cage change procedures can cause stress and potentially compromise animal welfare. Our previous study of breeding C57BL/6J mice found modest increases in pup production and a significant reduction in preweaning litter losses when mice were handled using a tunnel as compared with a tail-lift with padded forceps. The current study evaluated how these 2 handling methods affected reproduction by 2 additional mouse strains, BALB/cJ (a low- to intermediate-fecundity strain) and CD-1 IGS (a high-fecundity stock)...

As a step towards implementing non-aversive handling techniques at a big mouse breeding facility in Germany, tunnel handling was introduced in a breeding unit comprising three inbred mouse strains. To assess whether tunnel handling would be feasible for the animal technicians in their everyday work and beneficial for the mice when being handled during weekly cage change only, the behaviour of tunnel- and tail-handled animals of both sexes was examined before, during and after the handling events over a period of nine weeks...

To improve animal welfare for cattle and pigs during transport and at slaughter, online training modules for all staff including employees in the lairage pen, the slaughter line as well as animal welfare officers are developed at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Before starting the development of these modules, an expert elicitation survey using a modified Delphi approach was performed to identify action points considered most relevant for animal welfare during transport and slaughter, and as having the potential for improvement through training...

When using chickens in animal studies, the handling of these animals for sample collection or general examinations is considered stressful due to their prey nature. For the study presented here, plasma and salivary corticosterone as well as New Area Test behavior and fecal output were used to evaluate whether it is possible to influence this stress perception using a three-week clicker training program. The results indicate that clicker training seems to be a suitable refinement measure in the sense of cognitive enrichment for the husbandry of this species...

Heat stress in dairy cows can cause an increase in body temperature and respiration rate, and a decreased feed intake leading to reduced production. Dairy cows are better at handling heat when they have access to shade. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effects of providing shade to high-yielding dairy cattle during the summer in the Swedish climate. Twenty high-yielding Swedish Red dairy cows, held on pasture, were divided into two groups, one with access to shade (S) and one without (NS). Milk production was recorded daily and shade temperature and relative humidity were recorded at 10 min intervals at pasture...

Rodents in livestock farming constitute a threat to the one health approach. In the present observational case study, livestock farmers worked together with a pest controller within a pilot project. The aim of the study was to assess determinants associated with rodent-prevention potential. The study started in March 2019 on 24 livestock farms in a municipality in North Rhine-Westphalia/Germany. At the beginning of the project a survey on the determinants expected to be related to prevention potential was conducted...

Mice are widely used as small animal models for influenza infection and immunization studies because of their susceptibility to many strains of influenza, obvious clinical signs of infection, and ease of handling. Analgesia is rarely used in such studies even if nonstudy effects such as fight wounds, tail injuries, or severe dermatitis would otherwise justify it because of concerns that treatment might have confounding effects on primary study parameters such as the course of infection and/or the serological response to infection...

BACKGROUND: Pre-slaughter process during transportation, handling, and lairage causes stress in pigs, affecting animal welfare and meat quality. Therefore, lairage factors are important for relieving stress. A total of 24 LYD (Landrace × Yorkshire × Duroc) barrows were used to investigate the effect of 6 and 20 h lairage time (LT) on cortisol, serotonin, and catecholamine in blood and physiological factors in muscle, and to verify the causal relationship between these factors...

Historical dog training methods reveal that dog training then and now might not have been that different. While some methods that would be considered unacceptable today have vanished over time, much of what we do today has been practiced historically for a long time. Albertus Magnus' De animalibus and Petrus de Crescentiis' Ruralia commodia deliver us historical evidence on how dogs were perceived, kept and trained by our ancestors. Not only were they already kept as pets, but they were also used in a wide range of professions...

Salmonellosis is globally recognized as one of the leading causes of acute human bacterial gastroenteritis resulting from the consumption of animal-derived products, particularly those derived from the poultry and pig industry. Salmonella spp. is generally associated with self-limiting gastrointestinal symptoms, lasting between 2 and 7 days, which can vary from mild to severe. The bacteria can also spread in the bloodstream, causing sepsis and requiring effective antimicrobial therapy; however, sepsis rarely occurs...

Pasture-based production systems are predominant in major beef-producing countries; however, these systems lack validated protocols to assess animal welfare under commercial conditions. The objective of this study was to test the feasibility of the proposed measures and methodology for the evaluation of animal welfare in fattening cattle under pasture conditions. The initial methodology was developed with the participation of producers, professionals, the general public, and the Colombian health authority, through workshops with a participatory approach and collaborative knowledge management...

In addition to the information on the possession of a certificate of competence, there are no concrete obligations for repetitive training for personnel handling live animals at transport and slaughter. Deficiencies in the animal-welfare-friendly handling of pigs are known. The developed pilot modules "Handling of pigs" and "Electrical stunning" were tested in a pretest-posttest study in German and Romanian using questions of knowledge before and after the implementation of the modules. In this study, 45 and 46 datasets of participants could be analyzed...

The IntelliCage allows automated testing of cognitive abilities of mice in a social home cage environment without handling by human experimenters. Restricted water access in combination with protocols in which only correct responses give access to water is a reliable learning motivator for hippocampus-dependent tasks assessing spatial memory and executive function. However, water restriction may negatively impact on animal welfare, especially in poor learners. To better comply with the 3R principles, we previously tested protocols in which water was freely available but additional access to sweetened water could be obtained by learning a task rule...

Saracatinib/AZD0530 (SAR), a Src tyrosine kinase inhibitor, mitigates seizure-induced brain pathology in epilepsy models upon repeated oral dosing. However, repeated dosing is stressful and can be challenging in some seizing animals. To overcome this issue, we have incorporated SAR-in-Diet and compared serum pharmacokinetics (PK) and brain concentrations with conventional repeated oral dosing. Saracatinib in solution or in-diet was stable at room temperature for >4 weeks (97 ± 1...