Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Interest in animal welfare is increasing in Sweden and Europe. To ensure compliance with the Swedish animal welfare legislation, the County Administrative Boards (CABs) are carrying out official control at animal premises. Animal welfare can be a sensitive area of concern and the handling of animal welfare controls tends to get attention by animal owners. Animal owners' preconceived notions and expectations can lead to rumours, which may not always correspond with the reality. How animal welfare officers view advice and how they perceive animal owners’ expectations can generally influence what form of advice they consider most suitable to give. The purpose of this study was to investigate the views of animal welfare officers on how much advice they think that they are allowed to give to animal owners in connection with an inspection, if it differs and why. The study also aimed to investigate if the animal welfare officers experience that animal owners expect advice, and in which areas the animal welfare officers perceive requests for advice based on questions from animal owners. Data was collected through a survey that was distributed by email to all animal welfare officers in Sweden. According to this study, it appears that the animal welfare officers agree that some form of advice may be given to animal owners. A large majority agreed that general and informed advice may be given, to owners of both production animals and of companion animals. General advice was defined as provide an explanation of what the legislation says and possibly give examples of how the legislation could be fulfilled. Informed advice was defined as provide guidance or suggestions referred to other knowledgeable businesses or information pages. The officers perceived the animal owners as expecting specific advice and seem to expect general advice and concrete suggestions. In the case of questions from the animal owners that the officers perceived as requests for advice, the areas were mostly about building, housing and permits/licenses. The results also show that the animal owners' expectations of advice risk to a small extent making the work more difficult through a less pleasant dialogue and extended handling time. Future studies should preferably focus on methods to increase the public's knowledge of the control authorities' animal welfare work, as well as methods to provide positive communication between animal owners and animal welfare officers.