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Engineering solutions to address challenges to animal well-being
Engineering solutions to address challenges to animal well-being may offer valuable input based on (1) the approach by which we generate and evaluate solutions, and (2) the selection and implementation of technology.
Animal welfare may be assessed within the three main areas summarized by Fraser in 2008: affective state, biological function, and natural living. To attain the highest level of welfare, a state of well-being, animal housing and husbandry should address all three areas simultaneously. This can be a significant challenge when there are competing forces that decrease well-being in one area when attempting to increase it in another. Challenges to animal well-being should be addressed with an engineering systems-thinking approach, recognizing that the housing and husbandry of animals is a complex system with interconnected components. Solutions to challenges have historically addressed challenges individually, leaving the remainder of the system vulnerable to unintended consequences. For example, the egg-layer industry solution to increasing floor space by adding depth to the cages resulted in unintended challenges with feeder space.
Engineering solutions may be derived not only from the way we approach the challenges, but also with the selection and implementation of appropriate technologies, such as sensors for monitoring the environment and/or the animal or control systems to provide automated animal management. The classical engineering approach to technology has been related to environmental control, specifically for providing optimal thermal comfort based on a setpoint condition or controlling lighting or feeding on a set schedule. This traditional approach to animal housing and husbandry has been prescriptive, but resulted in the ability to increase the scale of animal production. The deficiency in this approach is that it takes a one-size-fits all approach to the needs of the animals under a given set of conditions. Advances in technology are moving quickly toward viable on-farm capabilities to offer real-time status inputs of individuals or groups of animals, which has the potential to offer a new approach to animal management.
Keywords: technology, welfare, management