Welfare & Emerging Diseases
Understanding and improving animal welfare

Animal welfare is a topic of great interest in our society. Everyone agrees that we should treat animals with care and respect. At the same time, the way we regard an animal strongly depends on the context in which it is held, as we tend to approach companion animals, production animals and laboratory animals quite differently.
The research programme Behaviour & Welfare strives to improve the welfare of animals in our society, by investigating emotional and cognitive processes that contribute to the adaptive capacities of animals. Importantly, we think that animal welfare research should be based on understanding biological and behavioural mechanisms that determine animal welfare, independent of the animal's context.
Investigating emotional and cognitive processes in animals is essential for understanding animal welfare