Animal welfare materials

Another requirement of the new animal welfare regulations is that any cage or pen in which nonhuman primates are housed must also contain toys, food, or other objects that animals can manipulate, as they would objects in their natural environment. From experience, laboratories have found that toys in themselves are not sufficient since the animals quickly lose interest. Effective enrichment materials include foraging boards (fur-covered objects under which food is buried) and puzzle feeders for more complex foraging. 

An overview of animal welfare in organic farming by Vonne Lund is presented elsewhere (see Chapter 8). Animal welfare is reduced in conventional intensive housing systems because of high densities and lack of stimuli like straw, and this may lead to behavioural disturbances, injuries or some diseases. Livestock housing on organic farms should allow for the behavioural requirements of different farm animal species, facilitate efficient management, and use environmentally friendly construction materials and methods. 

There are many in vivo and in vitro approaches to assessing the irritation potential of surfactants. For overall results, in vivo applications and observations are the most useful and realistic measures. The Draize method has been utilized for many years for this purpose and been found useful for assessing irritation potential. Recently, it has become conttoversial to utilize the Draize method with animals because of concerns for animal welfare, despite its purpose of isolating caustic materials in order to avoid human exposure. Many in vitro methods have been developed recently that are useful alternatives to the animal tests and even as functional tools for analyzing the cause of irritation [13,14],... 

All exposed and extraneous conductive parts accessible to livestock have to be bonded together by supplementary equipotential conductors. Where there are metal grids in conductive floors, they have to be bonded to the protective conductor. Fire precautions (subsection 605-10) call for heaters to be separated from livestock and combustible material, and for RCD protection operating at not more than 500 mA except where supplies are essential for animal welfare. 

Animal tests have been extremely useful in the past to help manufacturers in the classification of their siufactants in terms of skin irritation potential, even if human and animal skin are not exactly the same. Methods have strongly evolved over the years toward methodologies more respectful of animal welfare lowering the concentration, volume, and surface of application of the test materials. A ban of animal testing for cosmetic products... 

Air pollution The presence of foreign matter (gaseous or particulate or combinations of both), bacteria, sound, or other undesirable elements in air, which is detrimental to the health or welfare of man, animals, plants, or materials. 

Panel on food additives, flavorings, processing aids, and materials in contact with food Panel on animal health and welfare... 

The advantages of egg yolk antibodies with respect to the welfare of animals and to scientific and economic considerations are described in a recent review.50 Although antibodies issued from this source are mostly used in laboratories and for diagnostics, they must be extracted and purified from very complex mixtures. The presence of massive amount of insoluble material and lipids is the most important problem. The collected egg yolk must first be clarified and the lipid removed for a consistent chromatographic separation. Table 3 summarizes the most important characteristics of expression systems for antibody preparation with regards to the chromatographic separation. 

Ambient Air Quality Standards. The primary mechanism for regulating air pollutants on the basis of material damage effects is outlined in Sections 108 and 109 of the Act. These sections lay out the process for setting primary (health-based) and secondary (welfare-based) national ambient air quality standards for criteria pollutants. Materials damages fall under the secondary standard setting process, where welfare effects are defined as "effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation, man-made materials, animals, wildlife, property,... transportation, as well as effects on economic values and personal comfort and well being."... 

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