Animal Welfare Classes in Brazil

As some friends from abroad asked me to write also in English so that they could follow the blog easier here we go

Thanks Ulrike for the message by the way ;)

I thought a lot about what should I write about in my first post from 2013 and I decided to write about my biggest wish for the Animal Welfare Science here in Brazil which is the inclusion of Animal Welfare Classes in all the Universities in the country for the courses of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science.

Both Vet and Animal Science students seem to have a resistance for classes about Animal Welfare. This classes many times are not taken seriously by students. They think for some reason that it's not that important =/

Vet students are really focused in diseases, treatments, reproduction. Very often this students forget that being a Vet is not only this. I say it because I was like that when I was in vet school.

Not that I think all this areas are not important...  far from me to judge like this! I believe all classes are extremely important for our graduation as vets but I also thing that universities fail in graduating complete professionals.  Those ones who will understand the whole thing. It doesn't matter if you're are the best in big animals clinics if you don't know anything about the daily routine in the farms.

Many vet students think that if they only take care of animals' health they are already taking care of animals' welfare but remember that welfare is not only being healthy. We need to use our knowledge in all this areas to think together about how to ensure animals a good life.

The Animal Science students are very focused in production. In this course it says a lot about meat, egg, milk production and so on... The word for the most part of them is efficiency! How to feed so that the production increases or how to improve a system so that the productivity increases. However what many students forget is that if you improve WELFARE you can also reach the desired efficiency!

Working on housing systems, for example,  to ensure better welfare for the animals can reduce many problems that may lead to animal culling, as lameness for example, and also improve production.

Animal Science professionals are really important for the Animal Welfare Science!!!

Nowadays in Brazil there aren't many researches in Animal Welfare that fits in our reality. When we think about Dairy Cows the number is even lower.

What is missing?

It's missing professionals interested in this area... The root of the problem is that students are not exposed to the topic in the right time and when they are it's not always done in the right way.

I'd like to invite  Carolina Lorena Hohl Abrahao to write a bit about the inclusion of Animal Welfare classes in the Brazilian Universities as it was the topic of her final work... would you like it?

Well... that's it

I hope you have a great day

see you in the next post