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Abstract:

The definition of animal welfare and its application is intertwined with ethical concerns. The differential importance adhered to different aspects of animal welfare and what is acceptable as minimal welfare threshold varies within and among groups and individuals. We studied the interpretation of the commonly used three-fold welfare definition based on the biological, affective and natural functioning of the animals. We examined to what extent Flemish students of specific animal-oriented studies differed in the importance they adhere to the biological, affective and natural functioning component of this three-fold welfare definition. Final year students of veterinary science, biology and animal management studies were asked to fill out an online questionnaire in which they scored the relevance of statements pertaining to multiple aspects of either biological functioning (e.g. how important is it for an animal to function well biologically?), affective welfare (e.g. how important is it for an animal to feel emotionally well?) or natural functioning (e.g. how important is it for an animal to express its’ natural behaviour?). Additionally, several expressions linked to these respective aspects were scored (e.g. “Absence of illness and abnormal behaviour equals sufficient welfare”” It is an ethical imperative that animals experience positive emotions”). The students were asked to identify their ethical viewpoint as being relatively more zoocentric, anthropocentric or ecocentric. We analysed the weight in the respective curricula of courses focusing more on either of the three aspects. Subsequently, we examined the relationship between the relative importance the students adhered to the different components of welfare, their expressed ethical viewpoint and the type of animal-oriented study they had undertaken.