Zoos and Animal Welfare

Ethics and animal welfare evaluations in South East Asian zoos: a case study of Thailand.

Concern for zoo animals is palpable throughout society in many countries in South East Asia. It is important to understand problems of animal welfare in order for zoos to make significant improvement in maintaining high standards. With a case study of 3 zoos in Thailand, this article presents results for the first time on how ethics and welfare evaluations are conducted in South East Asian zoos...

The Assessment of Animal Welfare in British Zoos by Government-Appointed Inspectors

We analysed the reports of government-appointed inspectors from 192 zoos between 2005-2008 to provide the first review of how animal welfare was assessed in British zoos since the enactment of the Zoo Licensing Act 1981. We examined the effects of whether or not a veterinarian was included in the inspection team, type of inspection, licence status of the zoo and membership of a zoo association ...

An epidemiological approach to welfare research in zoos: the Elephant Welfare Project.

Multi-institutional studies of welfare have proven to be valuable in zoos but are hampered by limited sample sizes and difficulty in evaluating more than just a few welfare indicators. To more clearly understand how interactions of husbandry factors influence the interrelationships among welfare outcomes, epidemiological approaches are needed as well as multifactorial assessments of welfare. Ma...

Do Formal Inspections Ensure that British Zoos Meet and Improve on Minimum Animal Welfare Standards?

We analysed two consecutive inspection reports for each of 136 British zoos made by government-appointed inspectors between 2005 and 2011 to assess how well British zoos were complying with minimum animal welfare standards; median interval between inspections was 1,107 days. There was no conclusive evidence for overall improvements in the levels of compliance by British zoos. Having the same zo...

Determining Connections between the Daily Lives of Zoo Elephants and Their Welfare: An Epidemiological Approach

Concerns about animal welfare increasingly shape people's views about the acceptability of keeping animals for food production, biomedical research, and in zoos. The field of animal welfare science has developed over the past 50 years as a method of investigating these concerns via research that assesses how living in human-controlled environments influences the behavior, health and affective s...

Ethics and welfare in southeast Asian zoos.