Assessments and predictions of patient quality of life (QoL) permeate many veterinary decisions, including (1) whether to perform a procedure due to concurrent QoL issues, (2) whether a procedure will negatively affect QoL in the near or distant future, and (3) whether QoL is poor enough to warrant euthanasia. In order to understand how veterinarians manage decisions relating to patient well-being, interviews with 41 veterinarians and over 100 hours of observations of 10 veterinarians were conducted. Participants held diverse views regarding the type of parameters that should be included when defining QoL. Interestingly, they also held differing views about who should be assessing patient QoL, with some participants believing that animals' owners were better able to assess patient QoL than veterinarians. For these veterinarians, respecting the client's autonomy in deciding what was best for the patient weighed heavily in their decisions. Other veterinarians felt that they, rather than the client, were the best assessors of QoL and felt justified in persuading clients to follow a certain course of action (often considered a paternalistic approach). These findings raise some interesting questions for the profession. What role should veterinarians play when assessing patient QoL? When is paternalism acceptable or even mandatory in veterinary medicine? Does respecting client autonomy also require an evaluation of the client's abilities to make appropriate decisions for the patient? The lack of uniformity in defining and assessing patient QoL highlights the need for increased dialogue with respect to veterinarians' responsibilities to both animals and clients.

The welfare of animals in extensive systems has received little attention despite significant welfare challenges in these environments. Additionally, recent reform of Common Agricultural Policy payments in the EU have put increasing financial emphasis on farmers to attain improved levels of animal welfare, although suitable methodologies for assessing animal welfare are lacking. Assessment of welfare in intensive systems frequently involves assessing compliance with buildings and space requirements, as well as behavioural observations of animals in their home pens and monitoring of health records. In extensive systems, however, many of these measures are inappropriate or impossible. Environments are often heterogeneous, animals may be difficult to observe, individuals may not be identifiable and health records may be limited or completely lacking. The expression of fear by extensive animals, which rarely come into close contact with humans, often limits the value and practicality of behavioural observations as welfare indicators. Currently, welfare audits of extensive farms rely greatly on mortality and morbidity records to determine welfare status. Whilst these measures are important, the strong health monitoring bias does not adequately allow an interpretation of the emotional experiences of extensive animals. We suggest that developing methodologies based on assessing key features of the environment, such as handling facilities, assessment of the skills, knowledge and planning of the stockperson, and assessing the animal at key points in the production cycle when they are gathered may allow a workable methodology for assessing animal welfare to be developed for extensive systems.

Since animal minds are private, so their perception of their own quality of life (QoL) must be also. Anthropocentrism, the interpretation of reality exclusively in terms of human values and experience, has to be guarded against in any assessment of animal welfare; for domestic pets, misapprehensions about their olfactory and cognitive abilities appear to present the greatest challenge to their welfare. Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human qualities to animals, presents a particular problem when considering companion animals, since most bonds between owners and their pets appear to be based upon a perception of the pet as almost human. Many owners report that their dogs, cats and horses are capable of feeling complex emotions, such as pride and guilt, that require a level of self-awareness that has been difficult to demonstrate even in chimpanzees. Such beliefs appear to contribute to the development of behavioural disorders in pets; for example, clinical experience suggests that the application of punishment by owners who attribute ‘guilt’ to their animals may unwittingly lead to compromised welfare. Anthropomorphic owners are also likely to be poor proxies for reporting their pets' QoL.

Feasibility and validity of protocols used to assess welfare were evaluated in two fattening rooms in twenty farms, chosen according to the group size, pen shape, floor and space per animal. The two rooms contained animals at the beginning or at the end of the fattening period, respectively. Behaviour was recorded either through direct observations of the pens (3 times per minute, at 5 min intervals), 15 minutes after entering the room (B1) or after the removal of an object given at the end of the visit (B3). The third protocol consisted of a 2 minute observation inside the pen (B2). To evaluate the human-animal interaction, the time to adapt to the presence of the operator in the corridor (HA1) was measured, as well as the reaction of the group when the operator entered the pen (HA2) or walked slowly through the pen (HA3), the time taken by the first five pigs to approach the operator (HA4) and the reaction of the animals when the operator tried to catch an ear (HA5). Lesion scoring was carried out inside the pen on a sample of 60 individual fatteners or at pen level on most of the pigs from the corridor. The occurrence of the main active behaviours is assessed similarly over time by B1 and B3. Behavioural observations are then possible in an on-farm welfare assessment. Lesion scoring from the corridor tends to under estimate the number of lesions (scratches, tail wounds). The HA3 test appears to be the best one to evaluate the relationship towards humans but has to be validated.

It was the purpose of this study to assess the consistency of selected animal-based welfare parameters for dairy cattle throughout a one-year period. Eight cubicle-housed dairy herds were visited five times, at two-monthly intervals. At each visit, lameness, injuries to the carpal and tarsal joints, cleanliness, social behaviour and the avoidance distance towards an unknown person were assessed by the same observer in a random sample.

At herd level, lesions of the carpal joints, udder cleanliness and frequencies of agonistic and cohesive behaviour showed low consistency. However, correlations between consecutive recordings as well as between single visits and the average were moderate to satisfactory for lameness prevalence, lesions of the tarsal joints, cleanliness of the hind leg and avoidance distances towards an unknown person in two different locations. The integration of these parameters into on-farm welfare assessment protocols seems to be justified.

Over the last twenty-five years, Norway has given priority to research to improve hunting methods for Minke whales. This has resulted in an increase in the instantaneous death rate (IDR) from about 17% in the early 1980s to about 80% today, and, thus, in a considerable decrease in the time to death (TTD) (Øen 2003). TTD data have been collected by official veterinary inspectors on board Norwegian whaling vessels and reported annually to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) since 1983. Estimates of TTD have been based, predominantly, on the ‘criteria of death in whales’ that were established at an IWC workshop in 1980 (IWC 1980). These criteria in principle require complete immobility, ie a whale can only be pronounced dead if it has stopped moving, the jaw and flippers have slackened, and it is sinking passively. However, as early as 1995 the IWC agreed (IWC 1995) that the criteria were incomplete and sometimes misleading, as they did not allow for reflex movements and seizures that occur in the unconscious state after an animal is stunned. This phenomenon is well-known from the slaughter of domestic animals (for review, see eg Knudsen 2005). The IWC identified a need for a more reliable method of determining the time of onset of permanent insensibility in whales (IWC 1995) and in particular asked for research investigating in detail the trauma, and its consequences, caused by hunting methods.

‘Animal Ethics Dilemma’ is a freely available computer-supported learning tool (www.animalethicsdilemma.net or www.aedilemma.net) which has been developed primarily for veterinary undergraduates but is applicable also to students in other fields of animal science. The objectives of the computer program are to promote students' understanding of the ethics related to animal use, to illustrate ethical dilemmas that arise in animal use, to broaden students' moral imagination, and to enable students to differentiate between types of ethical argument. The program comprises five case studies: (1) the blind hens; (2) ANDi the genetically modified monkey; (3) euthanasia of a healthy dog; (4) animal slaughter; and (5) rehabilitation of seals. Special consideration has been given to enhancing the pedagogic value of the program. Students can control their learning by selecting a variety of ways to explore the program; for example, they can navigate the program using the ‘Assist Me’ option, which explains the basis of the ethical arguments. Reality text provides details of real events on which the case is based, and a glossary of terminology is available for the students to explore. Selected access to a case template is also available, enabling students and teachers to create their own case studies. Evaluation of the program has been ongoing during its development.

New transport legislation and society demands may increase the need for a ‘fast’ method to assess animal welfare at the abattoir. The objective of this study was to identify valid and feasible parameters which could be easily assessed at slaughterline in pigs. Eight transports (4 ‘far’ and 4 ‘near’ the abattoir) were evaluated using a questionnaire which included both animal-based and environment-based parameters. A ‘welfare index’ (WI) (0 = worst to 1 = best) was estimated for each transport based on the questionnaire. Lean and fat content, skin lesions, pH and electrical conductivity (PQM) were measured in 120 or 60 pigs per transport. When pH > 6 the meat was considered dry, firm and dark (DFD) and when PQM > 9 μs meat was pale, soft and exudative (PSE). Odds ratio between welfare index and slaughterline recordings was estimated. Differences in WI between the different transports were smaller than expected (WI ranged from 0.4 to 0.6). However, a significant relationship between higher percentage of DFD meat and lower welfare index (odds ratio: 2.25) was found. These results suggest that parameters like DFD meat could be used at the abattoir to perform a ‘snapshot’ welfare evaluation.

Because it is the pet-owning public that normally provides the day-to-day care for companion animals, maintaining or improving standards in animal welfare is best achieved by engaging owners in the debate over an individual animal's quality of life (QoL). Veterinary practice teams (including veterinary surgeons and nurses) are in an ideal position to promote discussion of pets' QoL, as most owners respect and value their opinion. As well as educating each new generation of animal carers on appropriate husbandry, the veterinary profession can engage the pet-owning public in the scientific process of QoL assessment and the related debates concerning definitions of welfare and QoL. QoL assessment is a complex process with many influencing factors. The structure of an assessment will depend upon its purpose, which may be research, legislation, a certification scheme or, probably most usefully, a management tool to facilitate clinical decision-making. The process of completing a QoL assessment within a clinical environment may result in positive changes in human behaviour towards animals irrespective of the actual result of the assessment. This influence on human behaviour is a key test of validity for formal assessment systems that are designed to improve QoL.