Advances in Pig Welfare, Second Edition continues its complete coverage of key areas of pig welfare assessment, management and improvement. The book covers both recent developments and reviews of historical welfare issues, with 12 new chapters addressing the most relevant and significant issues from a global perspective. Sections review the needs of pigs, including chapters on the physical environment and the social and emotional needs of the animals, key welfare issues in the pigs lifecycle from birth to slaughter, including weaning, aggression and pig-human interactions, and emerging topics such as prenatal stress, individual differences and organic farming.
Final sections cover pig welfare and attitudes towards pig welfare amongst farmers and other stakeholders. Written by an international team of leaders in the field, the book continues to be a useful resource for practicing vets involved in welfare assessment, welfare research scientists and students, and indeed anyone with a professional interest in the welfare of pigs.
- Provides the most recent research applications in pig welfare
- Analyzes on-farm assessments of pig welfare, an extremely important marker for the monitoring of real welfare with impacts and implications for changes in other husbandry systems
- Includes factors that affect pig welfare, how to practically control these factors, and the impact that these factors have on animal health
- Provides new chapters on economics, husbandry, environment, climate change and precision livestock
Part One: Introduction 1. Pigs and their needs
2. Pain in pigs: Characterisation, mechanisms and indicators
3. Stress in pigs
4. Pig cognition and emotions
5. Positive welfare
Part Two: Pig Welfare Hotspots and mitigation
6. Overview of commercial pig production systems and their main welfare challenges A. Hotspots in sows 7. Mitigating hunger in pregnant sows
8. Sow welfare in confinement and alternatives
9. Sow longevity B. Hotspots in piglets 10. Lifetime consequences of the early physical and social environment of piglets
11. Piglet mortality and morbidity: inevitable or unacceptable?
12. Painful procedures C. Hotspots in growing pigs 13. Tail biting
14. Chains as proper enrichment for intensively-farmed pigs? D. Hotspots across the production cycle 15. Aggression in group housed sows and fattening pigs
16. Transport of pigs to slaughter and associated handling
17. Slaughter of pigs
Part Three: Pig Welfare Management Topics
18. On-farm and post-mortem health assessment
19. Pig-human interactions: Creating a positive perception of humans to ensure pig welfare
20. Breeding for pig welfare; opportunities and challenges
21. Precision Livestock Farming and technology in pig husbandry
22. Nutrition and the role of the gut microbiome
23. Pigs as laboratory animals
Part Four: Pig Welfare from a Global Perspective
24. Global developments in pig welfare: from legislation to market-driven change
25. The economics of pig welfare
26. Pig husbandry and the environment: adapting to climate change
27. Pig welfare and society
28. Farmer attitudes towards pig welfare
Irene Camerlink
Dr Irene Camerlink is a researcher in animal behaviour and welfare, with a focus on the social behaviour of pigs. She conducted her PhD at Wageningen University (Netherlands) and thereafter worked as postdoctoral researcher at SRUC (Edinburgh, UK) and Vetmeduni, Vienna (Austria) before taking a position as Associate Professor (Hab.) at the Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. She has over 65 peer-reviewed publications and is Editor-in-chief of the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science. She is editor of the books 'Animal Welfare in Practice: Pigs' and Bridging Research Disciplines to Advance Animal Welfare Science. Throughout her career she has studied pig behaviour and welfare by combining multiple disciplines such as genetics, ethology, behavioural ecology and social sciences.
Emma M. Baxter
De Emma Baxter is Associate Professor at SRUC, Edinburgh specialising in animal behaviour and welfare, with over 20 years of research experience particularly related to integrated pig science. Her main interests include; neonatal survival, developing alternative farrowing and lactation systems, implementing uptake of high welfare systems and practices and mitigating the health and welfare impacts of selection for production traits such as hyper-prolificacy. She has over 40 peer-reviewed publications and six book chapters. She works closely with industry with all sectors of the supply chain, providing consultancy and specialising in outreach to translate research into practice.
