Universities Federation for Animal Welfare
| Founded | 1926 |
|---|---|
| Focus | Animal welfare |
| Location |
|
| Origins | University of London Animal Welfare Society |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
| Product | Education |
|
Key people
|
Robert Hubrecht (Scientific Director) |
| Slogan | Science in the service of animal welfare |
| Website | http://www.ufaw.org.uk/ |
The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW), is an animal welfare science society. It is a UK registered scientific and educational charity.
UFAW works to improve animals' lives by promoting and supporting developments in the science and technology that underpin advances in animal welfare. It organises symposia, conferences and meetings, and publishes books, videos, technical reports and the quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal Animal Welfare. Its work has primarily been funded by donations, subscriptions and legacies.
UFAW has supported a wide range of project types, through the following:
In 1926, the University of London Animal Welfare Society (ULAWS) was founded by Major Charles Hume. As its support base amongst academic institutions grew and as more institutions and people came to know about and champion the scientific approach to animal problems that ULAWS stood for, the name of the society was changed, in 1938, to the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW). UFAW's aims were:
Since its foundation, UFAW has initiated many advances in animal welfare including the first handbook aimed at improving the care and management of laboratory animals (now on its 7th edition), the first programme of research on environmental enrichment (in zoo animals) and involvement in the Brambell Committee whose report into the welfare of animals kept under intensive livestock husbandry systems led to the formation of the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (later Farm Animal Welfare Council – FAWC) and the concept of the Five Freedoms.
Examples of more recent activities include funding of the work, at the University of Bristol, investigating the use of the concept of cognitive bias to assess the subjective emotional state of an animal – pessimistic or optimistic – and hence their welfare. UFAW has also supported work on genetic welfare problems of companion animals and produced a web resource that describes a range of genetic conditions that affect companion animals and which explains their welfare consequences – the impacts on the animals' quality of life.
UFAW established the Garden Bird Health Initiative (GBHi) to develop and publish guidelines about garden birds aimed at maximizing their welfare and conservation. A new strain of avian pox, for example, is an area of developing concern within the UK.
As part of its remit to educate and inform on animal welfare, UFAW has also produced a series of books, in collaboration with Wiley-Blackwell Science, that seek to provide an authoritative source of information on worldwide developments, current thinking and best practice in the field of animal welfare science and technology.
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