Contributions of animal breeding to animal welfare at WCGALP 2022

 

The World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production (WCGALP), to be held in July 2022 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, will organise a session on animal breeding and animal welfare, entitled “Contributions of animal breeding to animal welfare”. Paper submission is open and closes on 12 January 2022 (https://wcgalp.com/call-for-papers). We would like to invite you to consider submitting your papers to this session. We welcome papers on the following topics:

 

What can animal breeders and welfare researchers learn from each other?

1. Emerging evidence about candidate traits for welfare problems e.g. piling behaviour in hens
2. Emerging evidence about candidate traits for welfare solutions e.g. improved resilience of animals in novel housing systems
3. Breeders’ perspectives on animal welfare

 

Opportunities in animal breeding to remove the need for invasive procedures (or husbandry practices)

1. Examples include removing the need for tail docking, dehorning, beak trimming or mulesing
2. By selecting directly for physical conformation that mirrors the effect of procedure  e.g. blunter beaks, no horns
3. By selecting for behaviour/physiology that reduces need for procedure e.g. reduced tendency to peck, greater resistance to fly strike

 

Improving the welfare of animals (including fish) kept in cage-free systems

1. Selecting animals that form positive social relations (e.g stable affiliations, tolerant social responses, social buffering)
2. Selecting animals (including fish) that show resilient responses to complex social challenges including varying group sizes, mixing and differences in housing systems
3. Selecting animals that make good use of positive resources (e.g outdoor range use)

 

Opportunities for genetic improvement of animal welfare from new phenotypes

1. Individual activity monitoring as a tool to breed for better health and welfare
2. Automatic tracking of specific behaviours with positive or negative welfare consequences (examples: tail biting, aggression, feather pecking, smothering, foraging, exploration, dustbathing)
3. Preferably approaches where there is a clear link with breeding (genetic parameters have been estimated, considering welfare in breeding goals, indirect genetic effects models)

 

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