In order to assess equine welfare meaningfully, it is important to consider what is meant by ‘animal welfare’, and there are varied definitions of the term. These include ideas that welfare is the animal’s state regarding attempts to cope with his/her environment, incorporating both physical health and mental wellbeing, which are influenced by factors such as those from the 'five freedoms' and the 'five domains', and concepts focusing on the quality of life, such as 'a life worth living'. Differences in definitions may arise due to differences in moral or ethical standards of society and stakeholders being inclined to emphasise different aspects of animal welfare (e.g., health, productivity, behaviour, ‘naturalness’, etc.).
1. Defining Animal Welfare
In order to assess equine welfare meaningfully, it is important to consider what is meant by ‘animal welfare’, and there are varied definitions of the term (see, for example,
[1][2][3][4][5][6]). These include ideas that welfare is the animal’s state regarding attempts to cope with his/her environment
[7], incorporating both physical health and mental wellbeing, which are influenced by factors such as those from the ‘five freedoms’
[8] and the ‘five domains’
[9], and concepts focusing on the quality of life, such as ‘a life worth living’
[10]. Differences in definitions may arise due to differences in moral or ethical standards of society
[11] and stakeholders being inclined to emphasise different aspects of animal welfare
[12] (e.g., health, productivity, behaviour, ‘naturalness’, etc.). Additionally, welfare assessment methodologies may focus on different types of measures, such as resource inputs, environmental conditions or animal-based indicators
[13]. Indicators within these groups can also differ; for example, animal-based indicators might be physiological (e.g., hormone levels or heart rate variability), behavioural (e.g., free choice or approach tests) or based on physical characteristics (e.g., skin lesions or gait). The increasingly widespread desire to focus on animals’ subjective experiences (i.e., the way animals consciously experience pain, pleasure, suffering and a range of emotions
[14]) can be complicated further by both the influence of the human-animal relationship and humans not always being able to reliably or correctly interpret the experiences and feelings of non-human animals
[15].
Three areas of commonality within contemporary definitions of the term ‘animal welfare’ relate to: (i) an animal’s feelings or emotions, (e.g., the animal being happy or suffering from pain or another negative affective state); (ii) an animal’s health and ability to function biologically; and (iii) an animal’s ability to perform a normal array of natural behaviours
[12]. This latter point, regarding normal behaviours, presents a challenge when applying to equids who have been domesticated for many generations and selectively bred for human-directed work activities and to adapt to unnatural interspecific relationships, i.e., the closely entwined lives of domesticated equids and humans. Whilst, as previously mentioned, equids have retained many behaviours of their wild ancestors, they may have different behavioural needs in a captive environment. Additionally, some natural behaviours may be detrimental to welfare (e.g., fighting or fleeing predation), and conversely, some unnatural behaviours may be beneficial to welfare (e.g., positive human–animal interactions such as grooming or stroking).
There is also evidence that the ways in which stakeholders understand the concept of welfare might act as a barrier to the improvement of some equine welfare problems, highlighting the importance of the consideration of stakeholder constructs
[16] to facilitate improvement in equid welfare.
2. Measuring Equine Welfare
As with welfare assessments of other species, a significant challenge in measuring equine welfare is being able to confidently and reliably interpret the animals’ subjective experiences. It is challenging enough for human doctors to treat patients who can explain the location and intensity of their pain or psychologists who can ask patients about their mental state. Accordingly, for investigating the welfare of non-verbal animals, there is an important role of visible indicators that reflect an individual’s subjective perception of their situation. These indicators must also be scientifically robust and validated to enable the most accurate interpretation of an animal’s welfare status based on the current evidence.
Reliable indicators of horse welfare (i.e., those with a good evidence base) were reviewed by Lesimple
[15]. Key examples from this research include the following:
- Health-related—body lesions; body condition score and specific postures (lameness, prolapse, hoof condition and cough/discharges);
- Postural—ear position and neck shape;
- Physiological—cortisol (faecal, blood, hair and saliva); serotonin/oxytocin; white cell count and heart rate/heart rate variability;
- Behavioural—behavioural repertoire; time budgets; reactions to humans and cognitive bias (yawning, play, attentional state and vacuum chewing);
- Acoustic—snort.
In addition to developing a list of robust indicators, a practical process to collect and interpret data and to implement change is critical to ensuring that welfare measurements lead to welfare improvements. Endeavouring to go beyond the intention of providing good animal welfare to establishing working rules, the ‘five freedoms’ framework that identified sources of poor welfare was developed in 1993
[17]. All four nations of the UK have adapted the ‘five freedoms’ in their animal welfare acts (i.e.,
Animal Welfare Act 2006 (England and Wales),
Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 and
Welfare of Animals (Northern Ireland) Act 2011), which all state that “an animal’s needs shall be taken to include:
- its need for a suitable environment;
- its need for a suitable diet;
- its need to be able to exhibit normal behaviour patterns;
- any need it has to be housed with, or apart from, other animals;
- its need to be protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease”.
Whilst these acts aim to avoid conditions that may lead to poor welfare and to promote positive welfare, a limitation of the ‘five freedoms’ approach is that the framework itself is not explicit about what level of welfare is acceptable or optimal, nor does it address alternative needs of different animal species. For example, it may not be feasible to provide a ‘suitable environment’ without pre-existing knowledge of an equid’s natural habitat and associated physical and behavioural needs.
A more detailed and prescriptive method for assessing animal welfare is the ‘five domains’ model
[9], which focuses on the following domains:
- Nutrition
- Environment
- Health
- Behaviour
- Mental state
This model has been refined over the years following its initial introduction by Mellor and Beausoleil
[18][19] and adapted for assessing horse welfare
[20]. The first four domains focus on factors that give rise to specific negative or positive subjective experiences, which, in turn, contribute to the animal’s mental state, as evaluated in the fifth domain. The ways in which the domains interact with each other is also considered, with the aim of providing an overall assessment of whether the animal’s welfare experience is satisfactory or not. The current model also includes guidance on how to evaluate the negative and/or positive impacts of human behaviours (including those of owners, trainers, riders, handlers, farriers and vets) on animal welfare and the importance of seeking not only to remove harms but also to provide opportunity for positive welfare experiences
[21].
The application of the ‘five domains’ model for assessing horse welfare focused on the following interventions: weaning, diet, housing, foundation training, ill health and veterinary medical and surgical interventions, elective procedures, care procedures, restraint for management procedures, road transport, activity—competition, activity—work, activity—breeding females and activity—breeding males
[20]. McGreevy and colleagues
[20] also identified the importance of including structured reviews of the relevant literature for each component to ensure that understanding goes beyond the backgrounds, experiences and biases of the people involved in the welfare assessment, as well as flexibility, for example, to address individual differences of equids, such as previous learning, temperament and personal preferences.
Once any welfare problems have been clearly identified, there is then the opportunity to conduct an assessment of animal welfare risk, where risk is defined as “a function of the probability of negative welfare consequences and the magnitude of those consequences, following exposure to a particular factor or exposure scenario, in a given population”
[22]. One example of this process, developed by the European Food Safety Authority
[8], incorporates (a) a scenario in which an animal is exposed to a welfare risk, (b) evaluations of the nature of animal welfare effects associated with that risk and (c) calculations (including attendant uncertainties) of the probability of the occurrence and magnitude of the risk. Other considerations regarding welfare assessment include severity, i.e., the product of the intensity and duration of harm
[23][24][25] to equids. Assessments regarding severity should consider both physiological and behavioural parameters
[26].
Fundamentally, a comprehensive formal process for improving equid welfare requires a holistic, objective, quantifiable, unambiguous evidence-based approach that identifies the risks for negative welfare and opportunities for positive welfare, prioritises them and then implements welfare improvement interventions and appraises their success of welfare improvement activities
[27][28][29]. Achieving such a process that is effective is, undoubtedly, hugely challenging, primarily due to the complexities, scientific debate around definitions and methods, ownership of processes, logistics and costs.
3. Making Decisions with Incomplete Knowledge
Even experts might have varying opinions on equine welfare because of differences in individual beliefs, values, experiences and interpretations of incomplete information. To address this issue, the structured elicitation of expert judgement using the Delphi method can be useful to obtain a consensus and informed decision-making
[30][31]. This process can reduce bias and mitigate error among experts; deal with challenges including overconfidence, anchoring to available data and definitional ambiguity and is a popular method for assessing expert opinions on a topic
[32][33]. It has been used in the UK for assessing the welfare of farm animals, cats, rabbits and horses
[34], in the case of the latter, employed to prioritise the most important welfare issues in horses and those that warrant further research efforts or owner education.
The ‘precautionary principle’ is another important consideration when dealing with incomplete knowledge. This principle arose to guide decision-makers when considering the likely harmful effects of their activities on human health and the environment when exposed to uncertain risks, i.e., taking preventive action in the face of uncertainty
[35]. It has since been modified for application in questions of animal sentience by addressing serious, negative animal welfare outcomes.
Birch
[36] adopted two ideas from John
[37] that help with interpretation:
- “An epistemic rule (a rule about the burden of proof): when there is a live scientific hypothesis that posits a causal relationship between human action and a seriously bad outcome, we should set an intentionally low evidential bar for the acceptance of that hypothesis in the context of formulating policy.”
- “A decision rule (a rule about action): once we have sufficient evidence of a threat of a seriously bad outcome, we should act, in a timely and cost-effective manner, to prevent that outcome.”
There is also acknowledgement that waiting for overwhelming evidence to be generated and a clear consensus to be attained can be costly, and there is often a need for prompt responses to serious developing threats. The slow pace of the progression of science and policies presents a challenge in this regard.
Birch developed the following principle to be adopted when considering animal sentience:
-
“Where there are threats of serious, negative animal welfare outcomes, lack of full scientific certainty as to the sentience of the animals in question shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent those outcomes.”
With this in mind, he proposed two rules for consideration when dealing with animal sentience:
- “For the purposes of formulating animal protection legislation, there is sufficient evidence that animals of a particular order are sentient if there is statistically significant evidence, obtained by experiments that meet normal scientific standards, of the presence of at least one credible indicator of sentience in at least one species of that order.”
- “We should aim to include within the scope of animal protection legislation all animals for which the evidence of sentience is sufficient, according to the standard of sufficiency outlined in the first rule.”
It is apparent that this framework, based on the ‘precautionary principle’, could be readily adapted for equids used in sports.