Animal Welfare

Report on the Conference "Faces of pain"

(26th november, 2005) by Szilvia Szabó, Fauna Association

 This professional conference organised by The Hungarian Chamber of Veterinaries highlighted the phenomenon and the importance of pain from different aspects. A group of noted lecturers assured the high professional level, although the organizers invited specialists of other related fields as well. Besides having heard about karate and the history of arts, lectures were given on the connection of pain and animal welfare.

Even the nearly 20 lectures gave us only a short insight into the main aspects of the subject area of pain. The presenters had hardly a quarter of an hour to review their topic, but I am sure that each topic is worth a whole conference. Nevertheless, most of the lecturers gave an interesting and traceable summary in their subjects, highlighting the main points.

The day started with the definition of the notion of pain, stress and distress, and the review of their anatomical bases. Then the significance of pain was evaluated in the different fields. Lectures were held on the related problems of surgery, dentistry, optholmology, medicine, equine medicine obstetrics, and anesthesiology, on the faults of the practice, and how to avoid them. I would like to stress the remarks on anesthesiology that drew the attention of veterinary practitioners to the disadvantages – that can eventually be the loss of the patient - of the pain-killers/analgesics applied in the wrong time, composition or dose. Not to mention the case when they do not use these remedies. An important practical question can be the evaluation of pain, or, to put it more simply, how painful a treatment, injury or intervention is for the animal? To this day there is no objective measuring scale, but evaluation is possible on the basis of certain indirect signs like sounds, position of the body, depression/dejection, lameness.

The lecture on animal welfare was held by Mariann Molnár, (consultant, Eurogroup for Animal Welfare) in the second part of the conference. The speaker was not afraid of bringing on delicate problems, on the other hand it was professionally suitable to the rest of the conference, so I think the organizers could be satisfied having given a place to an environmentalist activist among the lecturers. We hope that this is the beginning of a progressive process, when prepared environmentalists and open-minded veterinaries can work together for the animals.

The lecture presenting probably the most unsettling pictures was on The Pathological Indicators of Pain Animal Cruelty. It is good to know that the signs of animal cruelty do not disappear, so, if required, they can be used as evidence against the perpetrators. The programme included the short presentation of the methods and application areas of alternative veterinary practice (acupuncture, homeopathy) as well.

Finally I would add that most of the lectures were on companion animals, in the case of which the owner is usually willing to allow/assign a bigger sum for the alleviation of the pains of its pet. But does the people who only have an economic relation to their animals, have the same attitude? Gábor Lórászkó at the end of the conference called the attention to the fact that the use of appropriate analgesics is a prescribed duty of his veterinary colleagues. All in all, those who participated in this conference had a very useful day.