A new animal welfare concept based on allostasis

Korte, S. Mechiel; Olivier, Berend; Koolhaas, Jaap M.

doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2006.10.018

Cited by 247 publications

(191 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Therefore, although the HPA axis of pigs may have been initially activated in response to ammonia, there was little evidence of a longer term biological cost of this response, implying that the pigs successfully habituated to these environmental conditions. Korte et al (2007) proposed a concept of animal welfare based around allostasis, that is, stability through change, which considered an animal's ability to successfully adapt to their surroundings an important indicator of their well-being. By this definition, the finding that the pigs showed some HPA axis activation in response to high concentrations of ammonia would not be considered as evidence of compromised welfare.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of chronic environmental stressors on growing pigs, Sus scrofa (Part 1): stress physiology, production and play behaviour

O’Connor

Parker

McLeman

et al. 2010

Animal

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Commercially farmed animals are frequently housed in conditions that impose a number of concurrent environmental stressors. For pigs housed indoors, elevated levels of mechanical noise, atmospheric ammonia and low light intensities are commonplace. This experiment examined the effects on growing pigs of chronic exposure to combinations of commercially relevant levels of these potential stressors. Four-week-old hybrid female pigs (n 5 224) were housed under experimentally manipulated conditions of nominally either ,5 or 20 ppm atmospheric concentration of ammonia (24 h), a light intensity of 40 lux or 200 lux (12 h) and mechanical noise at either <60 or 80 dB(A) (24 h) for 15 weeks in a fully factorial arrangement (2 3 ) of treatments. The response of pigs to these environmental factors was assessed using a suite of physiological, production and behavioural measures. These included indicators of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activation such as salivary cortisol and adrenal morphometry, as well as body weight, food conversion efficiency and general health scores. Play behaviour was recorded as it is thought to be inversely related to stress. Chronic exposure to ammonia produced the strongest effect, shown by lower concentrations of salivary cortisol and larger adrenal cortices in the pigs reared under 20 ppm ammonia, which may have been indicative of a period of HPA activation leading to a downregulation of cortisol production. The pigs in the ammoniated rooms also performed less play behaviour than pigs in non-ammoniated rooms. There was evidence for an interaction between high noise and ammonia on the health scores of pigs and for brighter light to ameliorate the effect of ammonia on salivary cortisol. However, there was no measurable impact of these potential stressors on the productivity of the pigs or any of the other physiological parameters measured. We conclude that there should be little concern in terms of performance about the physical stressors tested here, within current European Union legal limits. However, 20 ppm ammonia may have had an adverse influence on the well-being of growing pigs. In this study, all other aspects of the pigs' husbandry were optimal; therefore, it is possible that under less favourable conditions, more pronounced effects of ammonia, noise and dim light would be observed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of chronic environmental stressors on growing pigs, Sus scrofa (Part 1): stress physiology, production and play behaviour

O’Connor

Parker

McLeman

et al. 2010

Animal

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“…Rather, selection for resilience can be seen as a continuation of the genetic change associated with the process of domestication that has been occurring over several millennia (Price 1999;Mignon-Grasteau et al 2005;Canario et al 2013). A challenging concept arising from work on physiological regulation and affective states in animals and from work on resilience in rodent models and humans is the importance of what can be termed negative experiences in maintaining the dynamic responsiveness of the animal and in shaping its capacity to cope with challenges (Korte et al 2007;Russo et al 2012;Wu et al 2013;Bastian et al 2014). This leads to a formulation of good welfare that includes nurturing the capacity of the animal to cope with challenges that are intrinsic to its life history and that cannot be eliminated by other aspects of good housing, good breeding, good husbandry, good disease control and good climatic environment.…”

Section: Resilience and Animal Welfarementioning

confidence: 99%

Resilience in farm animals: biology, management, breeding and implications for animal welfare

2016

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Abstract.A capacity for the animal to recover quickly from the impact of physical and social stressors and disease challenges is likely to improve evolutionary fitness of wild species and welfare and performance of farm animals. Salience and valence of stimuli sensed through neurosensors, chemosensors and immunosensors are perceived and integrated centrally to generate emotions and engage physiological, behavioural, immune, cognitive and morphological responses that defend against noxious challenges. These responses can be refined through experience to provide anticipatory and learned reactions at lower cost than innate less-specific reactions. Influences of behaviour type, coping style, and affective state and the relationships between immune responsiveness, disease resistance and resilience are reviewed. We define resilience as the capacity of animals to cope with short-term perturbations in their environment and return rapidly to their pre-challenge status. It is manifested in response to episodic, sporadic or situation-specific attributes of the environment and can be optimised via facultative learning by the individual. It is a comparative measure of differences between individuals in the outcomes that follow exposure to potentially adverse situations. In contrast, robustness is the capacity to maintain productivity in a wide range of environments without compromising reproduction, health and wellbeing. Robustness is manifested in response to persistent or cyclical attributes of the environment and is effected via activity of innate regulatory pathways. We suggest that for farm animals, husbandry practices that incorporate physical and social stressors and interactions with humans such as weaning, change of housing, and introduction to the milking parlour can be used to characterise resilience phenotypes. In these settings, resilience is likely to be more readily identified through the rate of return of variables to pre-challenge or normal status rather than through measuring the activity of diverse stress response and adaptation mechanisms. Our strategy for phenotyping resilience of sheep and cattle during weaning is described. Opportunities are examined to increase resilience through genetic selection and through improved management practices that provide emotional and cognitive enrichment and stress inoculation.Additional keywords: affective state, allostasis, animal behaviour, animal temperament, animal welfare, disease resistance, genetic selection, homeostasis, resilience, robustness, stress inoculation.

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“…allostasis (Korte et al 2007), coping strategies (Øverli et al 2007), appraisal and cognition (Galhardo et al 2009) in farmed fish welfare will certainly allow a more comprehensive picture of how farmed fish welfare should be assessed, utilising both positive and negative indicators.…”

Section: Mental States and Possible Associated Welfare Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioural indicators of welfare in farmed fish

Martins¹,

Galhardo²,

Noble³

et al. 2011

Current Views on Fish Welfare

120

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Behaviour represents a reaction to the environment as fish perceive it and is therefore a key element of fish welfare. This review summarises the main findings on how behavioural changes have been used to assess welfare in farmed fish, using both functional and feeling-based approaches. Changes in foraging behaviour, ventilatory activity, aggression, individual and group swimming behaviour, stereotypic and abnormal behaviour have been linked with acute and chronic stressors in aquaculture and can therefore be regarded as likely indicators of poor welfare. On the contrary, measurements of exploratory behaviour, feed anticipatory activity and rewardrelated operant behaviour are beginning to be considered as indicators of positive emotions and welfare in

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A new animal welfare concept based on allostasis

Cited by 247 publications

References 31 publications

The impact of chronic environmental stressors on growing pigs, Sus scrofa (Part 1): stress physiology, production and play behaviour

The impact of chronic environmental stressors on growing pigs, Sus scrofa (Part 1): stress physiology, production and play behaviour

Resilience in farm animals: biology, management, breeding and implications for animal welfare

Behavioural indicators of welfare in farmed fish

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