BBSRC Animal Welfare Initiative - Bristol/Oxford/RVC

From October 2005, Bristol University Veterinary School is leading a 5-year BBSRC Animal Welfare Initiative Research Grant in collaboration with the Royal Veterinary College and Oxford University. This grant provides an opportunity to develop basic aspects of animal welfare science, and to address important topics in animal welfare research.

The grant is divided into two research programmes.
 
Programme 1

• a central aim of animal welfare science must be to improve methods for measuring animal welfare and for detecting welfare problems.
• we are addressing these issues using multidisciplinary approaches

Programme 2

• an important, but relatively under-researched topic in animal welfare science is the effect of early life experiences on subsequent vulnerability to welfare problems
• we are investigating this using two different examples

The grant brings together animal welfare scientists, veterinary scientists, psychologists, psychopharmacologists, neuroendocrinologists, statisticians, image analysts and information engineers to study a number of different common domestic species.