Professor Fraser presents ANZCCART lecture in Dunedin, NZ on 14 March
Cars, cats and climate change represent a few of the growing but neglected harms to animals caused by seven billion busy people. These and many other aspects of human life cause a spectrum of harms ranging from animal suffering to loss of biodiversity. Animal welfare and conservation thus involve many shared problems. Indeed, animal welfare […]
Public attitudes toward the use of fish and mice in biomedical research
Post-doctoral scholar Elisabeth Ormandy and colleagues in the Animal Welfare Program have recently published an article on public attitudes towards the use of animals in research. The study focused on the commonly used procedure of ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) mutagenesis. This procedure is used to introduce genetic point mutations and study various genetic diseases, including cancer. The […]
AWP review article identified as one 5 most highly downloaded papers in Dairy Science
One way to track how well our research is reaching a wide audience is the number of times papers are downloaded. The Journal of Dairy Science recently released figures for all downloads in 2012, and our paper entitled “The welfare of dairy cattle: Key concepts and the role of science” was listed as number 5 […]
David Fraser in New Zealand
David Fraser is on sabbatical leave during 2013. He is spending the first 4 months in New Zealand where he is associated with the Animal Welfare and Bioethics Centre of Massey University. His main goal for the year is to begin writing a book linking animal welfare and conservation, but the first task is to […]
Greatest Harms to Wildlife
Sara Dubois, PhD candidate’s recent article [link] surveying BC wildlife experts and the public, showed that both conservation-oriented and welfare-oriented participants agreed on the greatest harms to wildlife – urban development, pollution, resource development, and agriculture. Despite divisions in philosophy and professional practice, there was broad agreement on ranking activities that harm wildlife, indicating wildlife […]
Rachel Carson and Ruth Harrison Conference
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines changed the way people understand how our modern world can affect the lives of animals. Now, about 50 years after the publication of these two books, a conference will be held to ask what progress we have made in addressing the challenges laid out by these […]
Dairy calves benefit from access to forage early in life
Dairy calves are typically not provided forage in the first few months of life, in part because some farmers and scientists believe that this will slow intake of other solid feeds. New research from UBC’s Animal Welfare Program has now shown that access to forage early in life helps calves make the transition to the […]
Most highly cited paper within the Program for 2011
One way we can judge the impact of our research is when other scientists cite our papers in their own work. New research often takes several years to be noticed. This makes the high number of citations to Post-doctoral researcher Khan’s recent review on calf feeding practices especially impressive. This invited review, entitled “Effects of […]