Implementing the Five Domains Model for Improving Animal Welfare State
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Welfare".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2023) | Viewed by 7918
Special Issue Editors
Interests: animal behavior; stress physiology; animal health; animal welfare; dairy cattle; epidemiology; statistics
Interests: stress; equine; dairy; maternal behavior; education
Interests: farm animal behavior and well-being
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
As the thinking in animal welfare science has progressed, new conceptual animal welfare frameworks have been proposed. The Five Domains Model is one such framework, which has evolved since 1994 (see Mellor, 2016a, b; 2017, 2019; Mellor and Reid, 1994; Mellor et al., 2020). It has been gaining traction with livestock industries (Cargill, 2022; Fairlife, 2022; Tyson, 2021) as a potentially more robust framework for assessing animal welfare state.
Historically, determining animal welfare state has been based on physiological functioning, production performance, and economics. Yet, consumers tend to be more concerned about how an individual animal is coping and feeling (Alonso et al., 2020).
The Five Domains Model is broken into physical and functional states, that includes Domain 1: Nutrition; Domain 2: Physical Environment; Domain 3: Health; Domain 4: Behavioral Interaction; and Domain 5: Mental State. The model helps us to organize objective and measurable indicators (i.e., animal behavior, physiology, performance, neuroscience, and pathophysiology) from Domains 1 through 4. Next, the model considers how the animal’s nervous system interprets these measures and relays it into generating both posititve and negative mental experiences.
We acknowledge that mental experiences for both human and non-human animals are subjective, which means that we cannot measure or observe them directly. However, the Five Domains Model allows us, with caution and evidence, to infer and justify what these individual mental experiences are.
This Special Issue will use the Five Domains Model and apply this to managed non-human species (defined as livestock, companion, zoological, and laboratory) to increase agency, enhance postitve mental state and improve overall welfare state. The overall aim is to provide depth and breadth so key persons could consider using the Five Domains Model in future educational, assessment and third-party audit programs. Papers can either be original research or review papers.
Dr. Essam M. Abdelfattah
Dr. Nichole C. Anderson
Prof. Anna K. Johnson
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- affective state
- animal welfare/well-being
- five domain model
- welfare assessment
- physical and functional states
- mental state
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