AVA Conference Adelaide 2016

As animal welfare has become an increasingly important issue, there has been a focus on what constitutes animal welfare and how we can measure it. One approach has been to try to measure how the animal itself perceives its situation. Another approach has been to measure the biological function of the animal, through changes in physiology or health. Animal preferences may provide some insight into how an animal perceives its situation through indicating which of two or more choices it desires. However, the question is often asked – ‘Is this particular preferred choice good for them?’ This paper examines what we know about the links between animal preferences and their biological needs