This book, the fifth in the series 'Food Safety Assurance and Veterinary Public Health', has been conceived by a total of 33 internationally recognised experts from 11 different countries in Europe and from the USA, Canada and Australia, with backgrounds ranging from veterinary medicine, animal science, biology and microbiology to psychology, philosophy and ethics. It provides an up-to-date overview of the science of animal welfare and its assessment, of options for the assessment and management of risks for the welfare of production animals, and of the ramifications these may have for the safety of foods of animal origin. This volume is targeted at veterinary practitioners, official veterinarians in a control function, animal and food scientists, welfare scientists, students in animal welfare, auditing and inspection officials and risk managers at all levels of animal production. Other publications in the Food Safety Assurance and Veterinary Public Health series are: * Volume 1. Food safety assurance in the pre-harvest phase * Volume 2. Safety assurance during food processing * Volume 3. Risk management strategies: monitoring and surveillance * Volume 4. Towards a risk-based chain control

"It is essential reading for students and practitioners in animal welfare and animal science, and will also be of interest to readers in meat, veterinary and food sciences, and applied ethology."--BOOK JACKET.

This essay explores key features of the intensification of animal production in relation to animal welfare and animal ethics. It looks at some traditional ethical ideas about animal care in order to help explain why the intensification of animal production has become such a prominent social and ethical issue. It suggests that some of the standard claims made by critics of intensive animal production are seriously flawed, and proposes an alternative interpretation to account for some of the key developments in the intensification of animal production. Finally, it explores how this interpretation, if correct, leads us to a different set of actions to address animal welfare concerns in intensive production systems.

There has been a lot written about animal welfare in intensive farming systems, but very little about animals reared in extensive agricultural systems. Yet these animals make up a significant proportion of the world’s farm animal population, covering a large portion of the globe. Animals kept in extensive conditions face a unique set of challenges that are vital for anyone with an interest in farm animal welfare to understand. Animal Welfare in Extensive Production Systems presents those challenges in a practical way, backed up with thoroughly referenced research. Topics covered include heat stress, water quality and availability, nutrition, predation, poisonous plants, transport, human-animal interactions, and neonatal mortality. This book is ideal for animal welfare academics, students and researchers. It can also be beneficial to students in animal science, veterinary science and agriculture and to farm industry producers and personnel. The Animal Welfare Series covers current topics in animal welfare, to further research and inform the scientific, policy-making and farming communities. 5m Books

Reviews advances in understanding and improving the welfare of dairy cattle; Summarises current research on rumen biology, digestion and ways of optimising nutrition of dairy cattle from grazing to feed and feed supplements; Discusses latest developments in maintaining the health of dairy cattle, including the genetics of disease resistance and dairy herd health management

Sentience – the ability to feel, perceive and experience – is central to the animal welfare debate as it raises the question of whether animals experience suffering in life and death. This book explores and answers these questions in an objective way, based on the latest research and empirical evidence. Beginning with an introduction to sentience, the book investigates why we are so interested in sentience, when, as a species, humans became sentient and how it has changed over time. The book defines aspects of sentience such as consciousness, memory and emotions, and discusses brain complexity in detail. Looking at sentience from a developmental perspective, it analyses when in an individual’s growth sentience can be said to appear and uses evidence from a range of studies investigating embryos, foetuses and young animals to form an enlightening overview of the subject. With a full chapter covering ethical decisions such as animal protection and experimentation, this book is not only an invaluable resource for researchers and students of animal welfare and biology, but also an engaging and informative read for veterinarians and the general public. Sentience – the ability to feel, perceive and experience – is central to the animal welfare debate as it raises the question of whether animals experience suffering in life and death. This book explores and answers these questions in an objective way, based on the latest research and empirical evidence. Beginning with an introduction to sentience, the book investigates why we are so interested in sentience, when, as a species, humans became sentient and how it has changed over time. The book defines aspects of sentience such as consciousness, memory and emotions, and discusses brain complexity in detail. Looking at sentience from a developmental perspective, it analyses when in an individual’s growth sentience can be said to appear and uses evidence from a range of studies investigating embryos, foetuses and young animals to form an enlightening overview of the subject. With a full chapter covering ethical decisions such as animal protection and experimentation, this book is not only an invaluable resource for researchers and students of animal welfare and biology, but also an engaging and informative read for veterinarians and the general public.

Growth and Welfare in Advanced Capitalist Economies takes stock of the major economic challenges that advanced industrial democracies have faced since the early 1990s and the responses by governments to them. It has three goals: firstly, to further our understanding of how political economies have transformed over the past decades; secondly, to analyse the contribution of governments to these changes, by looking at their growth strategies and thirdly, to highlight and analyse the role of the reforms of welfare systems in this transformative change. In a nutshell, this book maps and provides general understanding of the evolution of growth regimes in advanced capitalist countries. It identifies five main growth regimes in contemporary advanced capitalist economies (three export-led and two domestic demand-led ones). To do so the book combines a supply side approach to economic growth as advocated by the Varieties of Capitalism Literature (OUP, 2001) with a demand side perspective as the recent discussion on growth models has exemplified. It argues that all political economies consist of growth regimes, which are based on a set of institutions that shape the supply side of the economy as well as on demand drivers such as government spending and private consumption. Both supply and demand are heavily shaped by the welfare state which provides for skills through education systems and stimulates demand through high social spending and private pension funds. The book focuses on the analysis of welfare reforms as growth strategies pursued by governments in an era characterised by financialization and the rise of the knowledge economy.

This book traces the origins of the German welfare state. The author, formerly director at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt, provides a perceptive overview of the history of social security and social welfare in Germany from early modern times to the end of World War II, including Bismarck’s pioneering introduction of social insurance in the 1880s. The author unravels “layers” of social security that have piled up in the course of history and, so he argues, still linger in the present-day welfare state. The account begins with the first efforts by public authorities to regulate poverty and then proceeds to the “social question” that arose during the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. World War I had a major impact on the development of social security, both during the war and after, through the exigencies of the war economy, inflation and unemployment. The ruptures as well as the continuities of social policy under National Socialism and World War II are also investigated.

The welfare state is in hard times, according to today's consensus. The deterioration of exceptional economic performance--the basis for the "Golden Age" of welfare capitalism--seems irreversible. This has slowed down welfare state expansion and radically shifted the ground for discussion on the future of the welfare state. This volume takes stock of "the state of the welfare state". How can we build a theory of the welfare state? How did the post-World War II welfare state relate to economic development? How do welfare states change? How did the reforms of pension systems--a key welfare state sector--develop in OECD countries? How did the most developed "Nordic welfare state" fare? How viable are today's advanced welfare states in the international economy? How may we recast the European welfare states for the twenty-first century?