The role of New Zealand's national Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (NAWAC) is to advise the Minister of Agriculture on all matters relating to the welfare of animals. Under its current mission ‘to facilitate the development of animal welfare policy and practice for New Zealand’, one of NAWAC's tasks is to advise on areas requiring further research. In their Annual Report for 1999 (published June 2000) NAWAC identified 21 specific areas for further research. These include the following:

Defining perception, awareness, consciousness and reflexive or self-reflexive consciousness is difficult. I will not linger on definitions of fuzzy concepts but will attempt to put forward evidence for the rationale that awareness is likely to emerge as a consequence of how the brain processes information. Efficiency in information processing has resulted in a limited number of preferential (motivational) states of the brain and, in fact, of the whole organism. In addition, animals have the ability to internally represent external conditions and, through interactions with the motivational state, generate expectations.

It is argued that optimal decision-making requires that possible sequences of behaviours each activate their associated neuronal networks representing cue- and context-related information. Prior to the initiation of an action, the consequences of each possible scenario are estimated. An efficient animal must have the ability to anticipate, weight and choose. This weighting occurs at a hierarchically higher level and results in signals which possess a coordinative function in activating the appropriate motivational state, response selection, activation of associated networks and maintenance of attention.

Higher cognitive executive centres perceive and recognize such signals and integrate ongoing behaviour with internal representations about the past and expectations within the context of the signal induced state. Humans experience these simultaneously-occurring processes as awareness. The nature of the subjective experience may vary from an emotional state to reflexive consciousness depending on the cognitive abilities of the species and the stage of development and the level of arousal in the individual.

The European Union (EU) currently comprises 15 Member States. Moves are underway for its dramatic enlargement through the accession in coming years of 13 further applicant countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Turkey. Accession depends upon applicants being able to satisfy the required economic, political and legal obligations and criteria. Through this process, the land area of the EU will increase by 34 per cent and its population by 105 million. Very large numbers of farm, laboratory and other animals will gain the welfare protection afforded by the EU legislation.

Determining objective measures for proof of consciousness in non-human animals has been helped by improved understanding of neural correlates of human consciousness. Functional imaging and neuropsychological studies have shown remarkable overlap between structures involved in actual perception of social and non-social objects and those involved in forming mental images of them. One area of particular interest is individual face recognition. This involves regions of the temporal lobe that are mainly only activated by actual perception or mental imagery of faces. Using behavioural, neuroanatomical and neurophysiological approaches in sheep, we have found that they have similar specialized abilities for recognizing many individuals from their faces. They have developed the same specialized neural processing regions in the temporal lobe for aiding such recognition. Furthermore, parallel activation of other brain regions controlling behavioural and emotional responses only occurs when they are overtly interested in the individuals whose faces they perceive. Such interest might therefore equate to their becoming consciously aware of them. Preliminary experiments have indicated that sheep may form and use mental images and that the regions of the temporal lobe that respond to faces can also do so under conditions where faces are suggested but do not actually appear. Such similarities between humans and sheep in this form of social recognition make it difficult to claim that humans can form mental images of faces whereas sheep cannot. While the ability to form and use mental imagery is not in itself definitive proof of consciousness, it is an important component part.

It is a popular notion that, compared to vertebrates, invertebrates have a reduced capacity to experience suffering. This is usually based on arguments that invertebrates show only simple forms of learning, have little memory capacity, do not show behavioural responses to stimuli that would cause ‘higher’ vertebrates to exhibit responses indicative of pain, and have differences in their physiology that would preclude the capacity for suffering. But, how convincing is this ‘evidence’ of a reduced capacity to suffer? Suffering is a negative mental state - a private experience - and, as such, it cannot be measured directly. When assessing the capacity of an animal to experience suffering, we often compare the similarity of its responses with those of ‘higher’ animals, conceptualized in the principle of argument-by-analogy. By closely examining the responses of invertebrates, it can be seen that they often behave in a strikingly analogous manner to vertebrates. In this paper, I discuss published studies that show that invertebrates such as cockroaches, flies and slugs have short- and long-term memory; have age effects on memory; have complex spatial, associative and social learning; perform appropriately in preference tests and consumer demand studies; exhibit behavioural and physiological responses indicative of pain; and, apparently, experience learned helplessness. The similarity of these responses to those of vertebrates may indicate a level of consciousness or suffering that is not normally attributed to invertebrates. This indicates that we should either be more cautious when using argument-by-analogy, or remain open-minded to the possibility that invertebrates are capable of suffering in a similar way to vertebrates.

The use of electricity to stun animals before slaughter was first developed in Germany and France in the 1920s. Electrical stunning systems are now used widely in the slaughter of pigs and sheep and, increasingly, for cattle. The Humane Slaughter Association (HSA), as part of its endeavours to promote high standards of welfare at slaughter has recently published an excellent set of guidance notes on the subject. This, the fourth in the HSA's ‘Guidance Notes’ series, describes the theory and practice of the use of electricity to stun and kill ‘red meat’ animals: cattle, sheep, pigs and goats (electrical stunning of poultry is not covered).

‘Mindreading’ or theory of mind (ToM) refers to the capacity to attribute mental states to others. This ability is regarded as a critical component of what has, to date, exclusively characterized the advanced social cognition displayed by humans. The false belief task is a key test for ToM in different animal species. On a standard non-verbal false belief task, humans pass from age 4, whereas non-human primates consistently fail. Neuroanatomical and behavioural evidence for dolphins, however, indicates that they are capable of passing ToM tasks. The current paper represents a synthesis of the relevant dolphin research on neocortical evolution and non-invasive behavioural tests of precursors for ToM and the attribution of beliefs. The success of dolphins on attribution of belief tasks, in the absence of learning or cueing, indicates that they are capable of ‘mindreading’. What are the implications of animal ‘mindreading’? ToM tasks probe for reflexive consciousness and, by this criterion, dolphins may display reflexive consciousness. The implication of this conclusion is that future behavioural studies of social cognition will have considerable ethical and legal implications for animal welfare.

Tuition in animal welfare and related ethical issues is included in an increasing number of secondary and tertiary level courses and there is a growing demand among students for information on the use of animals in science. UFAW receives many requests from students undertaking projects on this subject and seeking guidance on sources of information. This new website, which provides clear and balanced summaries of the issues, is a valuable addition to the literature to which students can be directed and has the advantage that it can accessed in seconds and for free (apart from communication line costs). The topics covered include: why study animals? minimizing the harm done to animals in science; benefits of animal-based science; balancing harm and benefit; ethics and use of animals; and control of animal use in science. The site presents well-written and succinct introductions to these topics: ideal for secondary-level - and for introduction to tertiary-level - debate on the subject. In addition, the site also provides a list of further reading and relevant videos and the web addresses of other relevant sites.