One Welfare: A Framework to Improve Animal Welfare and Human Well-being
Rebeca García Pinillos, BVetMed, PhD, DAWSEL, DECAWBM
90 pages. 2018. CABI.
ISBN 978-1-78639-385-2. Price $40.50.
One Welfare: A Framework to Improve Animal Welfare and Human Well-being is a fascinating resource for veterinary professionals and other animal welfare stakeholders to expand the evolution of the one-health concept with a prioritization of one welfare. The author's objective is to move beyond the focus of one health, which tends to be disease recognition, treatment, prevention, and epidemiology, and expand into a broader all-inclusive appreciation of the need for a total welfare and well-being approach.
One health is recognized as an absolutely necessary entity. In this book, the welfare piece of the puzzle is championed by the author as a logical extension of caregiving that emphasizes the well-being of animals, humans, communities, and the environment. Such an approach is a necessary step that completes the health caregiving equation; improved animal welfare upgrades human well-being.
Recognition of the importance of animal welfare as a separate component of global well-being is a daunting perspective. The author discusses the impact of one welfare in 5 specific areas: the connection between animal and human abuse; the social implications of improved animal welfare; animal health and welfare, human well-being, and food security and sustainability; assisted interventions involving animals, humans, and the environment; and sustainability interconnections among biodiversity, the environment, animal welfare, and human well-being.
For readers involved in the veterinary profession, this book may pose a challenge to their tendency for proactive inclusion in the troubled world around them. Veterinarians’ expertise in animal issues often leads them to feel obligated to take a leadership role in all human-animal interactions. This book provides specific clinical, sociological, and ecological examples of how veterinarians can impact the future of animal and human welfare and well-being.
One drawback of this book is that it does not have an expanded appendix of resources. Such an appendix would be a useful addition for readers who are not familiar with the various groups referenced in the text. As an aside, those interested in the topics of one health and one welfare should also consider reading Beyond One Health: From Recognition to Results by John A. Hermann and Yvette J. Johnson-Walker, which was reviewed in the September 2018 Book Reviews feature (J Am Vet Med Assoc 2018;253:727).
Reviewed by Brian Forsgren, DVM
Gateway Animal Clinic Cleveland, Ohio
Animal Welfare (3rd edition)
Michael C. Appleby, BSc, PhD; I. Anna S. Olsson, MSc, PhD; Francisco Galindo, MVZ, PhD
389 pages. 2018. CABI.
ISBN 978-1-78639-020-2. Price $58.50.
The third edition of Animal Welfare provides readers with an excellent broad introduction to key topics surrounding animal welfare science. Similar to the previous edition, this edition is divided into the following 5 sections: Issues, Problems, Assessment, Solutions, and Implementation. Each section provides evidence-based information and expert commentary on the complex issues surrounding animal welfare. Scientific, ethical, economic, and legal considerations are presented in an insightful and critical manner.
This book is an excellent primer for veterinarians, graduate students, researchers, and anyone else with an interest in animal welfare and behavior, including professional, paraprofessional, and lay audiences. Although this edition is very similar to the second edition in format and content, the material has been richly updated and includes new information on animal cognition and emotions. The updates reflect both the rapidly evolving nature of animal welfare science and the social circumstances surrounding it. This edition is also available in an e-book format, which contains additional materials including text, animated illustrations, videos, and hyperlinks to references and other resources.
I highly recommend this as a foundational book for anyone interested in animal welfare. The contributing authors include renowned international experts in animal welfare. The text is easy to read and understand and is well organized. Each chapter includes an abstract and a bulleted list of conclusions. This book is an excellent value for the price, and the e-book provides additional value beyond the print version. Both formats are rich with illustrations of the complex welfare issues surrounding animals, with numerous examples from the farm, zoo, and laboratory animal fields. Future editions could be improved by the addition of examples of welfare issues surrounding companion animals, including those in animal shelters.
Reviewed by Brenda Griffin, DVM, MS, DACVIM
University of Florida Gainesville, Fla
Advances in Poultry Welfare
Joy A. Mench, PhD
385 pages. 2018. Woodhead Publishing (an imprint of Elsevier). ISBN 978-0-08-100915-4. Price $148.75.
Advances in Poultry Welfare is an excellent overview of several major poultry welfare topics for interested professionals and laypeople. The book has 28 contributing authors and is a good resource with many references provided for each chapter. The overview of current commercial poultry production management practices provides those unfamiliar with today's modern poultry production a good basic understanding of all that goes into commercial production. That background provides readers with a solid foundation on which welfare issues can be considered. This book also points out many areas related to poultry welfare that are not well understood or defined and that require further investigation.
Some of the welfare issues reviewed include chick hatching, chick transport, beak treatments, and electrical and gas or low-atmosphere stunning at processing. On-farm welfare assessments, including both outcome-based and resource-based measures, are discussed. The chapter dedicated to individual bird assessment includes a discussion of euthanasia decisions and methods.
The last half of the book focuses on several of the big welfare-related challenges facing the poultry industry. For laying hens, topics covered include skeletal problems, feather pecking and cannibalism, sustainability of hen housing systems, and stocking density. For turkeys, topics covered include pecking and aggression, footpad dermatitis, and skeletal issues. This book also has a chapter devoted to welfare issues for backyard poultry.
Poultry welfare is an emerging discipline in which various stakeholders have very different views of what poultry welfare is. The subjective and often emotional aspect of welfare is evident in some of the chapters. This book points out the welfare challenges that the poultry industry has and is or will likely be addressing now and into the future. I recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in poultry welfare and wishes to improve the welfare of poultry.
Reviewed by David A. Pyle, DVM, DACPV
Zeeland, Mich
Advances in Cattle Welfare
Cassandra B. Tucker, PhD
250 pages. 2018. Woodhead Publishing (an imprint of Elsevier). ISBN 978-0-08-100938-3. Price $148.75.
Advances in Cattle Welfare is the first addition to the Farm Animal Welfare series to be authored and edited by academic leaders in cattle welfare research. The intended audience for this book is anyone interested in animal welfare or working with cattle, such as veterinarians, producers, and workers in the cattle industry or supporting industries. General theories of animal welfare are introduced and revisited throughout the book, reminding readers why specific subjects were chosen for discussion. The layout of the book is easy to navigate; the chapters are subdivided into sections and contain color photographs and summary tables. The contributing authors detail studies from around the globe, comment on the limitations of currently available cattle welfare research, and suggest topics for future studies. Many of the topics covered in the book invoke strong emotions from consumers and those working in animal agriculture. The authors do a good job of explaining and exploring those topics objectively through the presentation of peer-reviewed research. This book is not meant to be a guide on what is right and wrong regarding cattle welfare; rather, it is an excellent and comprehensive review of current research on the topic. One of the best features of this book are the summary tables in each chapter that compile published findings for a subject in 1 easy-to-reference location. I highly recommend this book for veterinarians interested in animal welfare and those working with cattle in their practice.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Cox, MS, DVM
Land O'Lakes Inc Turlock, Calif
Veterinary Toxicology: Basic and Clinical Principles (3rd edition)
Ramesh C. Gupta, DVM, MVSc, PhD, DABT
1,205 pages. 2018 Academic Press (an imprint of Elsevier). ISBN 978-0-12-811410-0. Price $127.50.
The third edition of Veterinary Toxicology: Basic and Clinical Principles is a hardcover book that provides useful toxicological information geared toward readers with an interest in veterinary or comparative toxicology. This book will also be a useful supplemental reference for veterinary students and clinicians. The 85 contributing authors are an impressive group of experts from academia, government, industry, and the private sector. The book consists of 82 chapters and is divided into sections including basic toxicological concepts, organ toxicity, radiation and carcinogens, drugs, metals and micronutrients, insecticides, herbicides and fungicides, rodenticides, gases and industrial toxicants, avian and aquatic toxicology, bacterial and cyanobacterial toxins, poisonous and venomous organisms, estrogenic toxicants, poisonous plants, mycotoxins, feed and water contaminants, analytical toxicology, and prevention and treatment.
A strength of this book is that it covers a broad range of topics that encompass basic principles of regulatory, diagnostic, pathological, clinical, and environmental toxicology as they relate to many veterinary species. This edition includes information regarding toxicants important in the United States and elsewhere and a chapter that describes analytic methods for the diagnosis of intoxications. A potential weakness of this book is that some chapters contain information that primarily focuses on human toxicology with limited veterinary application. Additionally, the cost for this edition is greater than that of previous editions, and the book is perhaps not as user-friendly as other more clinically oriented textbooks for general practitioners. Nevertheless, this book will be a nice addition to veterinary reference libraries.
Reviewed by Cynthia Gaskill, DVM, PhD, DABVT
University of Kentucky Lexington, Ky
Bovine Tuberculosis
Mark Chambers, BSc, PhD; Stephen Gordon, BSc, PhD; Francisco Olea-Popelka, DVM, PhD; Paul Barrow, BSc, PhD, DSc
269 pages. 2018. CABI.
ISBN 978-1-78639-152-0. Price $144.00.
Bovine Tuberculosis provides a focused, comprehensive overview of our current understanding of the disease caused by Mycobacterium bovis. The book has a beautiful cover. Inside, it is rather text heavy and would have benefitted from additional figures or images; however, the pathology section is adequate and contains some beautiful photomicrographs. The book is divided into sections that focus on public health and economics, disease mechanisms, the host immune response to infection, and disease surveillance and control. There is a strong emphasis on one health throughout the book. The importance of M bovis as a causative agent of zoonotic tuberculosis is highlighted in this book in a way that has not been appreciated in other recent reviews of the organism. This slightly different perspective makes the book a valuable reference for audiences focused on both veterinary and human health. The editors have assembled an impressive panel of leading experts in their respective fields. Unfortunately, the inclusion of so many contributors with different writing styles occasionally makes the text feel disjointed; however, the book concludes with a chapter entitled “Perspectives,” which provides a cohesive summary of the various sections. The text sometimes lacks basic background information. Thus, this book may not be adequate as a stand-alone resource for novices, but for readers who are familiar with the disease and are looking for an update on the current state of the field, this book is a one-stop reference. The impressive breadth of references also provides readers with a resource guide to many recent key findings in diagnostic testing, immunology, vaccinology, and epidemiology. Overall, although I do not recommend this book as a first read for students new to the topic, it is an excellent resource for researchers, veterinarians, and human health experts concerned with the current state of this fascinating and impactful disease.
Reviewed by Jodi L. McGill, BSc, PhD
Iowa State University Ames, Iowa
