Keelin Katherine Mary O'Driscoll
Fidelma Butler
Gareth Arnott- 1Pig Development Department, Moorepark Animal and Grassland Research Centre, Teagasc, Fermoy, Ireland
- 2School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
- 3School of Biological Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom
Editorial on the Research Topic
Animal welfare science: Rising to the challenges of a changing world
We are living in a time of significant global challenges and changes. Improving animal welfare can help in tackling many of these, so the science of animal welfare has a large part to play in helping attain a sustainable way of living in the future. There is also growing awareness and concern amongst many people around the world regarding the treatment and welfare of animals, and our responsibilities toward them. This has led to a growing shift in focus away from simply ensuring that managed animals do not have poor welfare, and toward providing them with a good quality of life. This Research Topic contains a selection of papers submitted to the 8th International Conference on the Assessment of Animal Welfare at Farm and Group Level (WAFL) which address these challenges. The collection includes a review of the challenges posted by precision livestock farming for sustainable livestock production (Tuyttens et al.), as well as two other papers demonstrating how technologies such as cameras can also present opportunities to reduce workload (Cooke et al.), and handling stress on animals (Qin et al.). It also includes a review discussing the impact of housing on sow welfare during the transition from lactation to the subsequent pregnancy, identifying a dearth of scientific knowledge in this area (Chou and Parsons). Finally, we also include a paper demonstrating how management and the environment can impact on animal resilience (Luo et al.).
Author contributions
KO'D wrote the first draft and the other authors edited and approved the manuscript.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Keywords: animal welfare, technology, PLF, sow, one welfare
Citation: O'Driscoll KKM, Butler F and Arnott G (2023) Editorial: Animal welfare science: Rising to the challenges of a changing world. Front. Vet. Sci. 10:1151773. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2023.1151773
Received: 26 January 2023; Accepted: 30 January 2023;
Published: 15 February 2023.
Edited and reviewed by: Laura Ann Boyle, Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ireland
Copyright © 2023 O'Driscoll, Butler and Arnott. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Keelin Katherine Mary O'Driscoll, 
keelin.odriscoll@teagasc.ie