Professional paper
WELFARE TO ANIMALS AND HUMANS - AT WHAT LEVEL ARE THEY IN CONFLICT?
Hrvoje Mazija
; Veterinarski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Vlasta Šerman
; Veterinarski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
Welfare to animals is the basic principle of successful productivity for feeding people. The level at which it is applied is frequently in conflict with the economic interests depending on influences dorectly connected with the living standard in some country. Rich countries in the west produce and consume significantly more animal products than they need while at the same time in the third world countries the basic needs are often not satisfied. The consequencies are drastic. Developed and rich countries pay for the high material standard with a series of diseases, in the first place obesity and diabetes. The poor die of hunger and undernourishment, 25000 of them daily, of which 16000 are children. Rich countries which have achieved high productivity and living standard by organized farm animal breeding now insist on welfare, rashly and to such a degree that the production of e.g. poultry is turning into a breeding ground for possible infections of people by a series of diseases and returning to the poultry the diseases once rooted out. The UN see the way to save the poor countries from further starvation in intensive farm poultry breeding which does not fully respect today only for the rich countries prescribed standards of welfare to animals. The open question remains how much better the poultry feel in the space people offer them as a better one and how much is the highest level of welfare, the free range breeding, more favourable. Judging from the results of some research on closed cages of a poultry house provided with microclimate, good quality feed and protection from infections the poultry are exposed to less stress than in an open space where they fear predators and are subjected to diseases some of which are also a threat to the health of humans.
Keywords
welfare to animals; poultry; free range breeding; farm animal breeding
Hrčak ID:
26819
URI
Publication date:
25.1.2008.
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