I recently spent a few days in Guelph, Ontario, attending the first-ever Dairy Cattle Welfare Symposium. This new event left me with a few new perspectives on a topic that I’ve been following.
The first thing that struck me about this symposium was the number of people in attendance from around the world. Click here to view a listing of all countries represented. I saw familiar faces from the U.S. and Canada, but I met new ones as well.
I walked to the afternoon workshops with a woman from Costa Rica. At lunch one day I sat with two gentlemen from Israel. During a presentation, I heard from a woman in New Zealand about a study involving producers using river stones as bedding for calves.
Whether during the presentations or in passing, it was clear that animal welfare is not just an issue we have to face in the U.S. because of groups like HSUS and PETA . Countries around the world are also addressing this issue, and the many researchers I heard from at this symposium are leading the way in defining what can be measured in terms of animal welfare and behavior. Because as Nina von Keyserlingk from the University of British Columbia said in her presentation, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Here in the U.S., we’ve developed the National Dairy FARM Animal Care Program to aid producers in measuring and managing welfare on their farms. Coincidentally, the same week as the symposium, administrators of the FARM program released a report that found its subscribers overall are doing a thorough job of adhering to the program’s multi-faceted approach to comprehensive dairy animal well-being. These results came from the review of 5,000 second-party evaluations and were backed by an independent third-party verification.
At the symposium, I learned the Canadian dairy industry is undertaking a similar process. Three years ago, it used independent and publicly available scientific review to redevelop its Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Dairy Cattle. Now they are working on the development of on-farm assessments to gauge how well farms are adhering to the code. These will be followed by a third-party verification system.
Another eye-opener at the conference was to see what the Europeans are studying in welfare. Researchers at the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany reported on studies that evaluated stress levels in dairy cattle during dry-off and vaginal examinations. Really, I shouldn’t be amazed, as other routine dairy practices that were not questioned 20 years ago are now hotly debated.
Take our current PD Poll on tail docking, for example. We’ve tabulated the results for you in this issue, and it appears that, even with science behind it, our industry cannot come to a clear consensus on how to best proceed with this practice. The most important thing we can do is to continue the discussion on animal welfare.
Women certainly have an opportunity to lead these discussions as one veterinarian suggests that women are more empathetic toward animal welfare issues. Click here to learn more about the perceived advantages and challenges of female dairy veterinarians.
Our annual “Women in Dairy” issue features several progressive female operators. Read on to get to know these leaders of our industry . PD
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Laren Lee
- Midwest Editor
- Progressive Dairyman
- Email Karen Lee
