This interest was especially triggered when I had the amazing opportunity to experience another culture in Tanzania.
I find it fascinating how much of a part animals play in the roles of our lives and how animals are viewed by different individuals. It is true that everybody is individual with this matter and as a result a vet's role has to be tailored to each individual client without compromising the vet's role of maintaining a high standard of animal welfare.
Whilst volunteering in Tanzania in October, I was very lucky to be able to have the opportunity to be part of a question and answer session with the local villagers where we exchanged experiences on the differences between life in a small Tanzanian community and Yorkshire. It soon became apparent that a very large part of their lives was agriculture. Everyone had either chickens, a few goats, a cow or two to live, we even got to look around the "Pig Project", where the Livingstone Tanzania Trust had given a loan to a group of people in the community and they have now set up their own small pig breeding unit. Animals play a huge role in their lives, a pig for example may be the opportunity for a child to go to school and get an education. I was a bit surprised to learn that they actually have a specific vet in this local community and that they have a vet in their local abattoir - again something that came as a bit of a surprise to me as I did not expect there to be an abattoir at all as even electricity hasn't fully been established in most of the places we visited. They were very keen to learn about the methods of farming we used on my work experience placements and they were very shocked and found the fact that I had worked on a pig farm with 3,500 pigs or a chicken farm with 120,000 chickens a bit incomprehensible! With their following question after I said this being "How do you feed them all?!". What I was trying to
explain was that in the UK very few people have livestock, but they have lots of animals. In Tanzania, everyone has a small amount of livestock and that is their livelihood. Whereas the majority of people in the UK earn their living in retail or other non agricultural jobs and a small amount of people provide all the food for them to buy. This really brought home to me just how much these animals meant to these families and the devastation of the loss of just one of their animals.
This isn't to say that farmers in the UK don't care for their animals - far from it! Farmers are regularly in contact with vets to produce herd health plans and planning preventative treatments to try and keep the animals in as good a health as possible and they do love their animals - this is quite evident from the devastation after diseases such as foot and mouth and bTB where farmers were left with nothing after the diseases wiped out sometimes generations of work breeding their prize herds. Their livestock is also their livelihood, just like the Tanzanian people, but with the amount of livestock that an average farmer owns, there is more factors to how much money they will spend on their animals. After all, farming is a business and a business needs to make money, so treating animals with vet fees that are more than the animal is worth is not economically viable, at the same time the farmer has to think about the other animals in their herd, for example, they need to remove any potentially infectious animals before the disease spreads as well as maintaining the highest level of animal welfare.
Then as most people in the UK do not work in agriculture, we keep animals as companion animals, from exotic animals such as snakes and llamas, to backyard poultry, dogs, cats, small furries and equines. To some people, animals may be viewed as an equal to humans? Some people may form stronger bonds than others with their pets? Some pets may have stronger attachments than others? What I am trying to get across is that the loss of animals affects people in different ways and the emotional attachment may be different in each individual scenario.
Animals are used in other sectors too, animals in horse racing and greyhound racing are used for entertainment but they also may have financial as well as emotional value. Also a big role of animals in communities across the world is in food production (but that is a post in itself).
Some animals have emotional value, some have financial values but either way, we need to remember that each human is an individual and respect what animals mean to them and help them to cope as best they can with their role in keeping their animals healthy or ensuring the best quality of life and humane departure.
All the pictures in the post are my own.
This isn't to say that farmers in the UK don't care for their animals - far from it! Farmers are regularly in contact with vets to produce herd health plans and planning preventative treatments to try and keep the animals in as good a health as possible and they do love their animals - this is quite evident from the devastation after diseases such as foot and mouth and bTB where farmers were left with nothing after the diseases wiped out sometimes generations of work breeding their prize herds. Their livestock is also their livelihood, just like the Tanzanian people, but with the amount of livestock that an average farmer owns, there is more factors to how much money they will spend on their animals. After all, farming is a business and a business needs to make money, so treating animals with vet fees that are more than the animal is worth is not economically viable, at the same time the farmer has to think about the other animals in their herd, for example, they need to remove any potentially infectious animals before the disease spreads as well as maintaining the highest level of animal welfare.Then as most people in the UK do not work in agriculture, we keep animals as companion animals, from exotic animals such as snakes and llamas, to backyard poultry, dogs, cats, small furries and equines. To some people, animals may be viewed as an equal to humans? Some people may form stronger bonds than others with their pets? Some pets may have stronger attachments than others? What I am trying to get across is that the loss of animals affects people in different ways and the emotional attachment may be different in each individual scenario.
Animals are used in other sectors too, animals in horse racing and greyhound racing are used for entertainment but they also may have financial as well as emotional value. Also a big role of animals in communities across the world is in food production (but that is a post in itself).
Some animals have emotional value, some have financial values but either way, we need to remember that each human is an individual and respect what animals mean to them and help them to cope as best they can with their role in keeping their animals healthy or ensuring the best quality of life and humane departure.
All the pictures in the post are my own.
