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Sustainability of the US Dairy Industry
Nina von Keyserlingk and other experts recently completed a review the sustainability of the U.S. Dairy industry, arguing that certain practices (see Figure) are problematic. Nina contributed especially to discussions around animal welfare and provided leadership in writing the paper.
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New paper published on human-wildlife conflict features BC ‘pot’ bears
The story of the BC ‘pot’ bears became international news in summer 2010 – now PhD student Sara Dubois has recently published her 2011 community survey of Christina Lake residents in an article in the journal Animals. The two-phase phone survey of local attitudes documented varying beliefs about wildlife feeding and management actions for problem…
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Sara Dubois to present at conference on solutions to conflicts with urban wildlife
PhD student Sara Dubois will present the results of her recent research at Living With Wildlife 2013. The conference intends to bring together local government officials, farmers, wildlife rehabilitation groups, animal control agencies, academics and individual citizens to work towards humane solutions to conflicts with bears, coyotes, beavers, deer and other urban species. Sara Dubois…
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Two papers featured on JDS top-cited list
Two Animal Welfare Program papers, Effects of milk ration on solid feed intake, weaning, and performance in dairy heifers and Lying behavior as an indicator of lameness in dairy cows, were today recognized by the Journal of Dairy Science in their list of the 100 top-cited papers since 2010. Kiyomi Ito, first author of top-cited…
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Emotional rats
What emotions do rats experience and how can we know? A newly published article by Animal Welfare Program members Joanna Makowska and Dan Weary reviews evidence that rats experience a range of positive and negative emotion, and that these states can be assessed scientifically using a range of techniques. The authors conclude that existing standards…
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Early separation of cow and calf
Newly published in the Journal of Dairy Science is an article by Beth Ventura and colleagues with UBC’s Animal Welfare Program describing attitudes toward the common practice of separating the dairy cow and calf and birth. Results suggest that this practice is a highly contentious. Opponents of early separation contended that it is emotionally stressful…
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Nature profiles Program’s research on improved euthanasia methods for lab animals
An article in this week’s edition of the journal Nature profiles the contributions of graduate students Joanna Makowska and Devina Wong in developing more humane methods of euthanizing lab animals
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Two new studies on attitudes toward the use of genetically-engineered animals in science
Post-doctoral scholar, Elisabeth Ormandy, and colleagues in the Animal Welfare Program and at the Canadian Council on Animal Care recently published two articles on the use of genetically-engineered animals in research. The first article describes public attitudes towards animal research, and the effects of invasiveness, genetic engineering, and regulation. The second article described the views…
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David Fraser co-authors paper in Science
Prof. David Fraser is co-author of a paper on “Sustainable Intensification in Agriculture: Premises and Policies” in the journal Science, released today. A policy known as sustainable intensification could help meet the challenges of increasing demands for food from a growing global population. The goal of sustainable intensification is to increase food production from existing…
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Better methods for drying off dairy cows
Cows are healthiest when they are given some downtime between lactations. When human mothers stop breastfeeding, they typically do it gradually, but standard practice on many dairy farms is to dry off cows abruptly. In a new study just published in the Journal of Dairy Science, UBC Animal Welfare Program researchers compared methods and found…