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Croney, C. C., & Millman, S. T. (2007). BOARD-INVITED REVIEW: The ethical and behavioral bases for farm animal welfare legislation. J. Anim Sci., 85(2), 556–565.
Abstract: Concerns about farm animal welfare vary among individuals and societies. As people increasingly consider the values underlying current farm animal production methods, farm animal welfare policy debates have escalated. Recent food animal protection policies enacted in the European Union have fueled highly contentious discussions about the need for similar legislative activity in the United States. Policymakers and scientists in the United States are apprehensive about the scientific assessment, validation, and monitoring of animal welfare, as well as the unforeseen consequences of moving too hastily toward legislating farm animal welfare. The potential impact of such legislation on producers, food prices, animals, and concerned citizens must also be considered. Balancing the interests of all stakeholders has therefore presented a considerable challenge that has stymied US policymaking. In this review, we examine the roles of ethics and science in policy decisions, discuss how scientific knowledge relative to animal behavior has been incorporated into animal welfare policy, and identify opportunities for additional refinement of animal welfare science that may facilitate ethical and policy decisions about animal care.
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Croney, C. C., Prince-Kelly, N., & Meller, C. L. (2007). A note on social dominance and learning ability in the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus). Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 105(1-3), 254–259.
Abstract: Relatively little is known about the relationship between social behavior and specific cognitive abilities of the chicken. It is uncertain whether dominant birds have a cognitive advantage over subordinate birds that might facilitate their superior position in the social hierarchy. Likewise, it is unknown whether subordinate birds compete successfully with higher ranking birds because their cognitive capacities compensate for physical deficits. In this study, the relationship between the chicken's position in the dominance hierarchy and its performance on a cognitive task was explored. Ten pairs of New Hampshire domestic roosters (Gallus gallus) were observed to determine dominance or subordinance within dyads. All birds were then trained and tested on a visual discrimination learning task. Discriminative stimuli were orange and green plastic discs. Correct stimuli (orange or green) were randomly assigned to birds. Placement of the discs (left or right of center) was also randomly assigned and counterbalanced to avoid a side bias. Birds were rewarded with food for pecking at the correct disc. Criterion for task completion was 80% correct responses on three consecutive test sessions or 86% correct on two consecutive sessions. All subjects met the test criterion. The number of trials to criterion was compared between dominant and subordinate birds using a paired t-test. No difference was found in performance between dominant and subordinate birds (p > 0.05) suggesting that in chickens, ability to learn a novel visual discrimination task is not well correlated with rank. Additional studies, particularly using different learning paradigms, are needed to confirm these results.
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