The 6th Annual Animal Welfare Science Symposium was held in Uppsala in June 2023. The venue attracted 55 participants who were actively discussing animal welfare.
The programme included short presentations from participants, primarily early stage researchers, as well as longer plenary talks from invited speakers.
The plenary talk by Vivian Goerlich (Assistant Professor at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands) on negative animal welfare dicussed animal welfare as a dynamic concept based on the animal’s ability to adapt to challenges, while Christine Nicol (Professor of Animal Welfare at the Royal Veterinary College, London UK and Field Chief Editor for the journal Frontiers in Animal Science) who talked about positive welfare asked the question: what is joy without sorrow? The plenary talk on animal welfare policy was given by Rebecca Doyle (Senior Lecturer in Animal Welfare at Edinburgh University and Deputy Director of the The Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education and a Researcher at the International Livestock Research Institute in Ethiopia)and was about sustainable animal welfare across the globe - from field to policy.
Plenary speaker Rebecca Doyle giving her talk
This years best presentation award was given to Claire Wegner from SLU for her talk: Behavioural response of dairy cows and calves to weaning and seperation after 4 or 6 months of full cow-calf contact.
Linda Keeling congratulates Claire Wegner for the best presentation at the Animal Welfare Science Symposium 2023.