Motivation is a central concept for animal welfare; it has inspired methodological breakthroughs and generated a wealth of crucial empirical work. As the field develops beyond its original mandate to alleviate the suffering of animals in intensive farming systems, the assumptions behind the current models of motivation may warrant closer scrutiny. In this paper, I examine some of the complexities of studying motivation — for example, that what an animal wants can depend on its welfare and that, through genetic selection and housing choices, we can modify what an animal finds to be rewarding versus punishing. The central theme of this paper is, therefore, that we cannot just ask the animals under our care (or even in the wild) what they want and assume that we will receive unadulterated answers, free from human influence. While asking questions about animal motivation with empirical research is invaluable and necessary, our models drive our research questions, methodologies, and results’ interpretation. When the models we employ remain implicit (eg the only motivation questions worth asking are those that could be implemented within the current housing systems), they have ability to stifle progress in understanding animal welfare. Thus, in addition to the empirical work, we also need to expose and evaluate the models that drive the research. Making the models explicit will facilitate our ability to identify their areas of silence, assess their strengths and potential limitations, as well as examine how they conceptualise the relationship between motivation and animal welfare. I end with a discussion of the implications of a few relevant models, both implicit and explicit, noting how such consideration reveals exciting areas for future work, including, for example, research on the motivation to make choices and the motivation to learn.

In nature, animals need to actively engage with the environment in order to prosper in survival and reproduction. Hence, agency is a central adaptive characteristic of animal life. In this paper, I propose that from the adaptive/functional point of view, four levels of agency can be distinguished, namely passive/reactive agency (animal being behaviourally passive or purely reactive), action-driven agency (animal behaviourally pursuing current desirable outcomes), competence-building agency (animal engaging with the environment to gain skills and information for future use) and aspirational agency (the animal achieving long-term goals through planning and autobiographical reflection). Recent progress in affective neurobiology indicates that each tier of agency is supported by a different type of affective functioning, at least in the case of mammals. Furthermore, the particular agency levels can be linked to distinct degrees of awareness as defined by recent selfhood theories. Based on this coupling between agency adaptive functioning, affective neurobiology and animal awareness levels, I examine several links between animal agency and animal welfare, including the notion of animal boredom, and discuss how animal agency might be promoted in the restrictive frameworks of intensive animal farming.

Boredom, while often casually attributed to non-human animals by both laypeople and scientists, has received little empirical study in this context. It is sometimes dismissed by others as anthropomorphic or a trivial concern in comparison to other welfare problems faced in captivity. Recent work on human boredom, however, has led to evidence that, far from being trivial, it can have serious consequences in the form of risky behaviour and reduced physical as well as mental health, and potentially contributes to social problems. Research on mink, supported by older literature on farm and laboratory animals, suggests that monotonous, stimulus-poor environments can induce an increased motivation for diverse stimuli, consistent with the experience of boredom. This experience is likely to be aversive and may lead to problems such as depression-like states or self-injurious behaviour if not addressed. Boredom should therefore be treated as an important welfare concern. Research is needed to find practical ways of identifying this state and to determine how widespread it is across species and which animals are most at risk. Possible ways of alleviating or avoiding this problem include offering animals in our care a choice in the level of stimulation they experience and opportunities to experience appropriate cognitive challenge.

Academics working on animal welfare typically consider the animal's affective state (eg the experience of pain), biological functioning (eg the presence of injuries), and sometimes naturalness (eg access to pasture), but it is unclear how these different factors are weighed in different cases. We argue that progress can be informed by systematically observing how ordinary people respond to scenarios designed to elicit varying, and potentially conflicting, types of concern. The evidence we review illustrates that people vary in how much weight they place on each of these three factors in their assessments of welfare in different cases; in some cases, concerns about the animal's affective state are predominant, and in other cases other concerns are more important. This evidence also suggests that people's assessments can also include factors (like the animal's relationship with its caregiver) that do not fit neatly within the dominant three-circles framework of affect, functioning and naturalness. We conclude that a more complete understanding of the multiple conceptions of animal welfare can be advanced by systematically exploring the views of non-specialists, including their responses to scenarios designed to elicit conflicting concerns.

Objective methods for assessing the cumulative lifetime experience of non-human animals would be valuable. We develop the hypothesis that biological age is a common currency that integrates the overall quality of an animal's lifetime experience across a range of types of exposure. Ageing is the result of the accumulation of somatic damage, and its rate is determined by the balance between experiences that cause damage and experiences that mitigate damage or promote repair. Negative affective states are associated with somatic damage via both direct causal and indirect pathways. Based on these premises, we predict that individuals that are biologically old for their chronological age will, on average, have experienced worse lives than individuals that are biologically younger, both in terms of their overall health and affective experience. Biological age is, thus, an attractive measure of cumulative experience because it requires no subjective decisions either about how a given exposure impacts an animal, or about how different dimensions of welfare should be weighted in an overall assessment. Biological age can be measured objectively using biomarkers. We argue that two biomarkers, namely leukocyte telomere length and hippocampal volume, are valid biomarkers of cumulative experience in humans, with potential for use in non-human vertebrates. We discuss how these biomarkers could be used to assess cumulative experience in animals, highlighting some of the limitations. We conclude that biomarkers of biological age offer a viable objective solution to the assessment of cumulative experience and their application in an animal welfare context deserves further exploration.

The ability to evaluate the welfare of non-human animals accurately and objectively is influenced by a variety of factors including the nature of our relationships with them. Subjective biases in the perception of an animal's quality of life can have either positive or negative consequences for its welfare and are likely to be particularly exaggerated in the case of companion animals, such as dogs, cats and other pet species, with which people tend to form strong anthropomorphic, attachment-based relationships. The consequences of these subjective biases are likely to be further exacerbated by the fact that many of the physical and behavioural attributes that humans find appealing, and have selected for, in companion animals, are inherently detrimental to their welfare. Using a range of examples, this paper explores some of the complex ways in which anthropomorphism and subjectivity can cloud our ability to make reliable judgements concerning the welfare of companion animals, even in the face of seemingly obvious and overt indicators of pain and suffering.

A central aim of animal welfare science is to be able to compare the effects of different ways of keeping, managing or treating animals based on welfare indicators. A system to aggregate the different indicators is therefore needed. However, developing such a system gives rise to serious challenges. Here, we focus specifically on the ethical aspects of this problem, taking as our starting point the ambitious efforts to set up an aggregation system within the project Welfare Quality® (WQ). We first consider the distinction between intra- and inter-individual aggregation. These are of a very different nature, with inter-individual aggregation potentially giving rise to much more serious ethical disagreement than intra-individual aggregation. Secondly, we look at the idea of aggregation with a focus on how to compare different levels and sorts of welfare problems. Here, we conclude that animal welfare should not be understood as a simple additive function of negative or positive states. We also conclude that there are significant differences in the perceived validity and importance of different kinds of welfare indicators. Based on this, we evaluate how aggregation is undertaken in WQ. The main conclusion of this discussion is that the WQ system lacks transparency, allows important problems to be covered up, and has severe shortcomings when it comes to the role assigned to experts. These shortcomings may have serious consequences for animal welfare when the WQ scheme at farm or group level is applied. We conclude by suggesting ways to overcome some of these shortcomings.

Animal welfare is generally referred to as the quality of an animal's life as experienced by the individual animal. On-farm welfare assessment, however, usually relies on both individual and group measures. As regards the latter, individual animals are not identified (eg incidence of stereotypic behaviour in a pen) or features of the whole group (eg score obtained from qualitative behaviour assessment) are used. This raises the question whether our current approaches to on-farm assessment sufficiently consider the individual nature of animal welfare. Measures assessed at the group level bear the disadvantage that distribution across group members may be skewed and the most affected individuals are not necessarily identified. However, the importance of knowing about the welfare state of individual animals depends on the purpose of the assessment. If the primary aim is farm assurance, the individual animal is of lesser importance, but non-compliance with thresholds at herd/farm level or comparison with peer farms may induce change. Using individual measures in a sample of animals means that animals not sampled but requiring intervention, eg for treatment of lameness, would have to be identified subsequently. Measures truly taken at the group level make individual interventions difficult, but interventions implemented at the group level (eg reducing stocking density) do not necessarily require information on the individual animal. Automatic detection of welfare-relevant states has received increased attention and identifying individual animals with impaired welfare seems to be promising. Automated early detection of problems may also reduce the ethical dilemma that traditional assessments at the end of the production cycle, eg in broiler chickens, may identify welfare impairments but not directly benefit the affected animals. Reflection on individual and group measures and their consequences for animal welfare may help in interpreting the outcomes of the assessments and stimulate future developments in the field.

Welfare is the state of an animal on a continuum, from poor to good, so many decisions about it are decisions of degree, such as how much feed, space or environmental enrichment should be provided. Other decisions are more discrete, such as whether animals should be kept in cages. However, in practice, many such decisions also involve a range of possibilities — such as whether laying hens should be kept in conventional cages, furnished cages, other housed systems or free range — so that decisions within the range are also of degree. Furthermore, in broader contexts, such as husbandry standards for farm animals, decisions are needed as to how many criteria are to be addressed, which are also decisions of degree. Similarly, decisions about which species to protect and from how early in individual development they need protection are to some extent categorical. This is sometimes referred to as ‘line drawing.’ However, this mainly refers to whether or not animals are sentient, and sentience is not clearly distinguished from other aspects of animals’ cognition and responses, so there is no conclusive boundary between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’ So, these decisions are also of degree: is there sufficient evidence to ‘move the line’ further? When there are pressures against change, such as financial cost, should welfare advocates ask for small or large changes? The answer to this question will depend upon circumstances. But discussion of different circumstances suggests that compromise, realism, gradualism and pragmatism are all important in achieving improvements in animal welfare, while noting that other tactics also contribute in particular contexts.

Looking at the issues from an economic perspective, we examine four approaches to the improvement of farm animal welfare: legislative initiatives, and initiatives driven by producers, consumer choice (labelling), and food companies (Corporate Social Responsibility; CSR). We take as our starting point the assumption that to obtain the best possible improvements in animal welfare, a combination of all four approaches will be needed. The main focus of the paper is to show that (and how) economics and other social sciences can play an important role in determining how to design and implement these approaches most effectively. We argue that insights from animal welfare science on what constitutes an improvement in animal welfare, and how such improvements are best measured, are a necessary input to the economic analyses. Economic analyses can guide the form and extent of welfare legislation so as to set decent minimum standards of animal welfare. To exploit producer-driven animal welfare opportunities, understanding the relationship between animal welfare, productivity and other product or production characteristics is essential. To make best use of initiatives driven by consumer choice and CSR, the focus needs to be on, not simply aspects of animal welfare for which consumers are known to be willing to pay, but also other welfare dimensions viewed as essential by animal welfare experts. Finally, recent, rapid developments in the marketing of animal welfare-friendly products have demonstrated the need for more knowledge about the ways in which consumers perceive the different kinds of information used in labels and CSR strategies.

Harm-benefit analysis (HBA) underpins the ethical framework of the regulation of animal experiments. This process involves a qualitative, and generally subjective, assessment of the potential benefits weighed against likely harms to be caused to animals. However, there is scope to prospectively quantify this process. A systematic and empirical assessment of historical data can give insights into why benefits are not realised and the magnitude of harm that animals experience. There is substantial scholarly evidence that risks to the 3Vs, the three core aspects of experimental validity in animal experiments (internal, external and construct validity) and low statistical power are limiting the reliability and reproducibility of research. Assessment of the 3Rs (reduction, refinement and replacement) is embedded in HBA and specifically seeks to minimise harm to the animals. However, no formal structure is in place to assess the likelihood of benefit, and we champion the 3Vs as a scale with which this may be achieved. Ethical approval procedures that consider the 3Vs and 3Rs using meta-research may be an approach to facilitate HBA. In ethical considerations related to animal research, there are value judgements that are integral to HBA, which cannot be measured directly. However, a quantitative and systematic approach is likely to be of added value. The perspective and examples described in this paper relate to laboratory animal research, but the approaches may lend themselves to different settings involving animals to ensure that decision-making and changes introduced, for example, to improve animal welfare, are evidence-based.

Australia has a significant live animal export trade — during 2018 over 2 million live cattle, sheep, goats and buffalo were exported by air or sea for either breeding purposes or slaughter. However, although live animal export generates substantial revenue for the Australian economy, the export trade is controversial due to a number of tragic animal welfare incidents that have happened over previous years.

The World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) represents more than 200,000 veterinarians across 105 associations. The mission of the WSAVA is: “To advance the health and welfare of companion animals worldwide through an educated, committed and collaborative global community of veterinary peers.”