%0 Journal Article
%T Farmer Perceptions of Pig Aggression Compared to Animal-Based Measures of Fight Outcome
%A Faical Akaichi
%A Irene Camerlink
%A Laura A. Boyle
%A Simon P. Turner
%J Archive of "Animals : an Open Access Journal from MDPI".
%D 2019
%R 10.3390/ani9010022
%X Aggression between pigs is a major animal welfare issue in commercial farming, however only a minority of farmers believe that aggression is a problem that needs to be addressed. We investigated whether the farmers¡¯ reluctance to reduce aggression is linked to desensitization as a result of their frequent exposure to the behavior. We showed farmers video clips of pigs during and immediately after a fight and they judged through a questionnaire the severity of what they saw. These judgments were compared to (a) animal-based measures of injury (skin lesions) and exhaustion (blood lactate), and (b) human observers with and without experience of working with pigs. Farmers perceived fights as severe and were motivated to prevent them continuing. They were not desensitized to aggression as their judgments were similar to those of participants who had never worked with pigs. When farmers (and comparison groups) did not see the fight occurring, they judged exhaustion and injuries to be lower than indicated by the animal-based measures. Farmers could benefit from information on how to better assess the impact of aggression by scoring lesions and from evidence of the economic and welfare impact of these lesions
%K aggression
%K animal welfare
%K desensitization
%K perception
%K pigs
%U https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6356235/