Farm animal welfare at work

In seeking to address problems in farm animal welfare one must neither call for a utopian state of rural harmony nor accept the inevitability of abuses associated with current practice. Progress in improving farm animal welfare can be made on farm by farmers but can only be sustained if supported by the rest of the food supply chain and ultimately by consumers themselves. There are some encouraging signs that this is happening although progress is slow. The Food Animal Initiative (FAI) has been established as a research and development unit at Oxford. Our aim is to champion the development of practical solutions, informed and underpinned by science, to enable farmers to respond to this demand and in doing so to encourage them to present themselves as members of a modernising, progressive industry.