The Welfare of Animals Part 7 docx

There are many skills required of veterinarians and welfare concern is central

to their profession. The key skills are disease detection and reporting, including

surgical treatment, drug therapy, epidemiology, population medicine and

preventive medicine. In addition, they must understand animal behaviour,

nutrition and reproduction sufficiently well to be able to advise how to prevent

or cure disease. They have to make treatment decisions in accord with ethical

norms, and they have to know and apply relevant animal law and codes of

practice. They should handle their patient and the owner with care and diplo￾macy, particularly in relation to small animal practice, and must often manage

their own business.

Veterinarians often have to give guidance on ethical issues, and in doing so

they must balance the requirements and demands of a number of different

interest groups. They have responsibilities to their clients, to their patients, to

the public, in managing the welfare of animals in the community, and to other

veterinarians, in terms of maintaining professional standards and upholding the

reputation of the profession.

Teaching Veterinarians About Animal Welfare

Almost the entire veterinary course could be said to be aimed at improving

animal welfare, and preserving welfare should be a central tenet in all the core

courses in veterinary training (anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacol￾ogy, pathology, biology of diseases, epidemiology, oncology, reproduction,

animal husbandry, animal behaviour, nutrition, species medicine and clinical

practice). The only parts of the course that are not directly concerned with

aspects of welfare are some zoonotic diseases, with the aim being to uphold

human, rather than animal health, and some toxic substances such as cadmium,

which rarely presents problems to domestic animals but can present problems

for the terminal consumer, humans, who are therefore subject to the greatest

problems of accumulation.

Table 7.1 Core competencies established by the Royal

College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) that relate to animal

welfare and ethics

Being aware of ethical responsibilities

Awareness of ‘emotional climate’

Ethical codes

Personal limitations re treatments

Legislation relating to welfare

Promotion of welfare

Euthanasing animals with sensitivity to feelings of owner

Assessing and implementing welfare records

Advising on accepted welfare standards

Teaching Veterinarians About Animal Welfare 131

In addition to the core courses, veterinarians may study professional

practice, which is usually focused on client and business management commu￾nication, skills, etc. This may include aspects of animal welfare management.

Other optional subjects include wildlife and exotic animal medicine, poultry

medicine and advanced nutrition1

. Animal welfare is taught as a separate

subject in many veterinary colleges, and this is likely to cover some of the

theoretical background – ethical approaches to managing animals, which will

influence animal welfare concerns, the means of measuring animal welfare,

contrasting physiological and behavioural methods, and relations between the

major animal diseases and welfare. It is useful, but less essential to highlight the

major animal welfare issues in each animal management system. Much of

this can be taught in other subjects, parasitology for example, but it is helpful

also to have a broad-ranging perspective which combines the considerations of

animal welfare, economics and environmental sustainability for each system.

Animal handling and transport can also be included. The objective should be to

enhance the students’ welfare knowledge so that their clinical and paraclinical

skills can be used to best effect.

The veterinarian qualifies with clinical, para-clinical and associated clinical

skills. Many, but not all of the clinical skills are unique to veterinarians, and

they are derived from a sound medical knowledge. As in human medicine, the

amount of knowledge is increasing very rapidly, and the increased expectations

of owners, particularly of companion animals, encourages the introduction of

advanced medical science into the program. Para-clinical skills, such as in

animal behaviour, epidemiology, production medicine, nutrition are also grow￾ing in importance. Associated skills include health and welfare management,

economics, animal ethics, role of animals in society, client management, etc. In

this field, the level of skills will probably depend on the level of interest of the

student and the particular interests of the university faculty.

There is a transition from farm to small animal practice and usually between

two thirds and three quarters of graduates will small animal practice. The

remainder mostly enter large animal practice. Small animal practitioners have

particular need of para-clinical and associated skills, especially animal beha￾viour, nutrition of small animals and client management skills, because the

problems that they have to deal with may relate to the client’s management of

the animals.

The recent ‘gender switch’ in veterinary education is likely to have an impact

on welfare management. The majority of all veterinarians practising in devel￾oped countries will soon be female. At the beginning of the 1980s, there were

approximately 92% male and 8% female students on veterinary courses, and

now it’s almost reversed, approximately 20%–30% male and 70%–80%

female, in most of the developed world. The reasons are numerous, including

1 RCVS specifies that their veterinarians do not have to be advanced nutritionists, in parti￾cular in relation to dairy cow nutrition, since there are others who will take this role.

132 7 Teaching Animal Welfare