UA Symposium to Address Food Animal Well-being

The Center for Food Animal Wellbeing will host the second annual symposium on Advances and Issues in Food Animal Wellbeing at the University of Arkansas on Aug. 9.

The deadline to register is Aug. 3.

The center is a unit of the UA System Division of Agriculture and the UA at Fayetteville.

The free, daylong event includes speakers on such topics as “Undercover Videos — It Can’t Happen to Us,” “Factors Impacting Public Perceptions of Animal Welfare and Rights” and “Why Science Isn’t Enough — What Consumers Need to Trust Today’s Animal Agriculture.”

Speakers will include Alice Johnson, vice president of food safety, corporate quality, animal welfare and government and public affairs with Butterball LLC; Gail Golab, director of the American Veterinary Medical Association Animal Welfare Division; Candace Croney, associate professor of animal sciences at Purdue University; and Elizabeth Rumley, staff attorney at the National Agricultural Law Center.

Center director Yvonne Vizzier Thaxton said the center’s goal is to improve animal health, animal handling, food safety and productivity by developing and defining objective measurements of well-being including measures of behavior, stress physiology, neurophysiology, immunology, microbiology and production efficiency.