Farm animal welfare has been gradually recognized as an important issue in most parts of the world. In China, domestic animals were traditionally raised in backyard and treated as an important component of family wealth. Industrialization of animal production brings forth the farm animal welfare concerns recently in China, yet the modern concept of animal welfare has not been publicized and a comprehensive recognition on how consumers and farmers perceive animal welfare is lacking. Therefore, we conducted a survey on public opinions toward farm animal welfare in China, based on pigs (including sows, piglets, and fattening pigs), domestic fowls (including layers and broilers) and their products. From 6,006 effective questionnaires approximately two thirds of the respondents had never heard of ‘animal welfare’; 72.9% of the respondents claimed that, for the sake of animal derived food safety, human beings should improve the rearing conditions for pigs and domestic fowls; 65.8% of the respondents totally or partly agreed on establishing laws to improve animal welfare; more than half of the respondents were willing, or to some extent willing, to pay more for high-welfare animal products, whereas 45.5% of the respondents were not willing or reluctant to pay more. In summary, farm animal welfare is still in its early stage of development and more efforts are needed to improve the public conception to animal welfare in the process of establishing farm animal welfare standards and legislations in China.

We report here an unexpected catalyst-free [2 + 2 + 2] annulation reaction which allows access to novel complex dimeric β-carboline derivatives in a single step. Various substituted ynones could react with dihydro-β-carboline imines to deliver interesting [2 + 2 + 2] annulation products in moderate to good yields. Alkynoates can also be tolerated in this system.

A mild and efficient catalyst-free [3 + 2] cyclization of isoquinoline imines and Morita–Baylis–Hillman carbonates has been developed.

We have developed a mild, convenient and efficient synthesis of highly functionalized (Z)-β-enamino ketones from readily available 3,4-dihydroisoquinoline imines and ynones through an aza-Michael/hydrolysis cascade reaction. This method is also suitable for the preparation of (Z)-β-enamino esters using alkynoates as starting materials. Complex fully substituted pyrroles can be constructed from the obtained (Z)-β-enamino ketones. It is an attractive alternative approach for the preparation of highly functionalized enamino ketones, esters and pyrroles.

A new compound, alpha-acetylamino-phenylprophyl alpha-benzoylamino-phenylpropionate (1) and a known compound 4-hydroxybenzyl beta-sitosterol ether (2), were isolated from the tubers of Gastrodia elata Blume and their structures were elucidated by spectral data.