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Journal of Applied Animal
Welfare Science
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Biology of Animal Stress:
Implications for Animal
Well-Being
David Fraser
Published online: 04 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: David Fraser (1999) Biology of Animal Stress: Implications
for Animal Well-Being , Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 2:2,
157-159, DOI: 10.1207/s15327604jaws0202_9
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327604jaws0202_9
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JOURNAL OF APPLIED ANIMAL WELFARE SCIENCE, 2(2), 157-159
Copyright O 1999, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
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CONFERENCE REPORT
Biology of Animal Stress:
Implications for Animal Well-Being
David Fraser
Animal Welfare Program
Department of Agricultural Sciences and Centre for Applied Ethics
Universiiy of British Columbia
Historically, research on animal stress has covered a wide range of scientific topics,
from brain biochemistry to wildlife population dynamics. Stress research has also
encompassed some of the best and worst examples of scientific investigation, ranging from Cannon's imaginative recognition of the "fight-or-flight" response (Cannon, 1929) to the 1960s' callous and simplistic research showing that inescapable
electric shock makes caged animals aggressive.
The conference "Biology of Animal Stress: Implications for Animal Well-Being," held August 16-19, 1998, in Davis, California, fully conformed to this tradition of diversity. The conference included four major sessions of invited
presentations. One session covered basic bodily reactions to stress, including
changes in endocrine responses, metabolism, immune function, and behavior.
Most of the presentations dealt with laboratory and farm animals and emphasized
the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) response to stress made famous
by Selye (1956). A second session examined the effects of long-term stress, especially confinement and social disharmony. A third covered a range of cognitive
and developmental aspects. A fourth session dealt with the alleviation of animal
stress through genetic selection, environmental enrichment, and improved animal
Correspondence should be sent to David Fraser. Animal Welfare Program, Faculty of Agricultural
Sciences and Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia, 2357 Main Mall, Suite 208,
Vancouver V6T 124, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
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158
FRASER
handling. In addition, poster presentations covered such disparate topics as hypothermia in pigs and the effects of fishnets on dolphins.
The conference brought together roughly three groups of participants: (a) scientists doing basic work on the endocrinology, physiology, and biochemistry of
stress; (b) scientists studying animal welfare and behavior; and (c) a variety of
nonresearchers, including humane movement workers, representatives of farm organizations, and even a scientifically oriented sled-dog racer. The organizers
clearly intended to create some much-needed interchange among the different
constituencies. In formal workshops and informal social events, the superbly
planned conference provided excellent opportunities for mingling and discussion.
Nevertheless, interdisciplinary dialog remained patchy. When participants and
others reflect on the proceedings, to be published by CAB International in 1999,
new ideas linking stress biology and animal welfare may well arise. Such ideas,
however, were rarely apparent in the presentations. The stress biologists presented
their findings with relatively little reference to the practical and animal welfare interests represented in the audience. Some animal welfare scientists used conventional snippets of stress physiology in their work. For example, David Mellor
showed how his group had used blood cortisol levels to assess different analgesic
treatments for animals undergoing surgical procedures. Yet, new ideas for integrating stress biology and animal welfare science rarely materialized. Moberg's
concept of the "pre-pathological state" (Moberg, 1985) continued to be proposed
as a link between stress and well-being. There was little evidence, however, that
the concept has been developed significantly during the decade after it was first
proposed. In fact, some of the most innovative contributions from the animal welfare and behavior scientists were those that relied least on biological stress theory.
Frederick Toates, for example, gave a masterful presentation of the hypothesis
(Toates, 1998) that animals, when they learn certain tasks, learn both cognitive and
stimulus-response components, and that distress can arise when these become uncoupled during later experience.
A few of the speakers came close to sparking dialog between the stress biologists and animal welfare scientists. In his keynote address, George Chrousos presented exciting evidence linking human emotional states and depressive disorders
to both overactivity and underactivity in the HPA stress response. This material,
however, made up only a small part of his presentation, most of which summarized
new developments in basic stress biology (Chrousos, 1998) and fell short of igniting a coming together of the welfare and stress workers.
Chrousos, Catherine Rivier, and other speakers did demonstrate how recent decades have greatly clarified Selye's conception of stress. In particular, the brain
pathways and the links between the central nervous system, the endocrine system,
and the immune system are now understood in far greater detail. This progress appeared solid but not visionary. Had Selye been listening, he might have been
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CONFERENCE REPORT
159
pleased that his canon remained so intact-or would he have been looking impatiently for a brave new synthesis and a new sense of direction for stress research?
Research on animal stress has always had a dubious side, both scientifically and
ethically. Selye himself described how he conceptualized a general response to
stress after purposely injecting rats with formalin (Selye, 1956); and stress biologists have continued ever since to study animals' reactions to extreme and highly
unnatural circumstances. In the conference, Don Lay reviewed some of this work.
He described, for example, the huge body of literature purporting to show how
early stress or stimulation affects later development. The treatments used in these
studies, however, often consisted of biologically meaningless interventions-handling of rat pups by a human for a few minutes each day-with no apparent
thought given to how such arbitrary procedures might relate to the evolved adaptations of the species.
The use of seemingly bizarre or arbitrary causes of stress was especially incongruous at a conference focused on animal well-being. When William Mason described his earlier studies of primate infants raised artificially in social isolation,
the animal-welfare-oriented participants politely bit their tongues. When a speaker
showed the changes in cortisol secretion of lambs that had been tied and blindfolded for 6 hr, many of the audience were more disgusted and mystified by the
choice of methods than impressed by the results. If stress biology and animal welfare science are to complement each other, they must find mutually acceptable
methods and devote more effort to broad, integrative thinking.
REFERENCES
Cannon, W. B. (1929). Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear and rage (2nd ed.). New York:
Appleton-Century.
Chrousos, G. P. (1998). Stressors, stress and neuroendocrine integration of the adaptive response. The
1997 Hans Selye Memorial Lecture.Annals ofthe New YorkAcademy ofsciences, 851,3 11-335.
Moberg, G. P. (1985). Biological response to stress: Key to assessment of animal well being? In G . P.
Moberg (Ed.), Animal stress (pp. 27-49). Bethesda, MD: American Physiological Society.
Selye, H. (1956). The stress cflife. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Toates, F. (1998). The interaction of cognitive and stimulus-response processes in the control of behaviour. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 22, 59-83.