Animal welfare is front of mind in Australia’s livestock industries with millions of research and extension dollars being spent on addressing community and consumer concerns.
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But at last week’s Animal Production 2016 conference in Adelaide many of the 340 scientists, consultants, students, processors and producers believed more could be done.
The audience was asked to vote on the progress of each industry after hearing from a panel of research and development and marketing organisations representing the egg, dairy, wool, pork, red meat, chicken meat and live export sectors.
The chicken meat and live export industries had the least support.
Meat & Livestock Australia health, welfare and biosecurity program manager Jim Rothwell said animal welfare was a priority and demand for red meat could decrease by 3 per cent by 2030 without maintaining community support.
About 6pc of shoppers had already reduced their meat consumption due to environmental or animal welfare issues and the figure was trending up.
Dr Rothwell says the red meat industry must show continual improvement but also faced a problem with “culture eating science for breakfast”.
A major threat to the industry was the attitude of consumers towards the land transport of livestock. A study showed well-informed urban consumers could not accept the transport times in Australian Land Transport Standards and Guidelines even though they were backed up by science.
“Research showed animals off food and water for a 48-hour trip spent three hours lying about and then they were indistinguishable from the rest of the mob,” Dr Rothwell said. “But the idea of being stuck in a truck is so abhorrent it was the most outrageous of five scenarios we gave them. They can’t help but put themselves in the animal’s position.”
Being owned by industry, Dr Rothwell says MLA is not in a “position to preach” to producers about animal welfare but there is good collaboration with the peak industry bodies on setting the tone.
Australian Pork Limited chief executive officer Andrew Spencer says they take the continuous improvement of pig welfare very seriously. This went beyond preventing cruelty.
“We are constantly challenged to find the appropriate balance for example between acute pain husbandry procedures like tail docking versus chronic suffering like tail biting, or between freedom of movement and expressing natural behaviour versus managing aggression between them and injury or death from negative animal interactions.”
They are being guided by science rather than democracy.
An example was sow stalls and farrowing crates.
Mr Spencer says Australia has become a world leader in the management of sows in loose housing and is three-quarters of the way towards phasing out sow stalls.
But it was yet to find a better alternative to farrowing crates for sows, piglets and handlers.
“We have been unable to find a better overall welfare system and in fact we believe without them some 0.5-1.5m piglets would be killed in Australia being crushed by their mothers” he said.
In the past decade Australian Wool Innovation has spent more than $60m on animal welfare – half of which has gone into protecting the national flock from flystrike.
AWI program manager productivity and animal welfare Geoff Lindon said there had been a wide range of research in addressing invasive husbandry procedures, improving parasite control and reducing ewe and lamb mortality.
He said feedback on the need for an alternative to mulesing had been loud and clear and a suite of genetic, mechanical and chemical breech modification alternatives had been trialled including clips, skin traction, liquid nitrogen and lasers.
On-farm trials had shown promise with liquid nitrogen reducing breech wrinkle, dags and breech wool cover but further work was being conducted by Steinfort AgVet to improve the process.
There has been large-scale adoption of post operative anaesthetic Tri-Solfen during mulesing in the past five years and pre-operative options would soon be available.
In a world first a longer acting pre-operative Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drug, Metacam has been registered for use in sheep, and a competitor meloxicam product Buccalgesic was due on the market in several months
