Veterinary educators teaching animal welfare and, more rarely, animal ethics (how humans should behave toward animals) find themselves in an invidious position when determining what to teach. On the one hand, the future veterinarians will on graduating, by virtue of their detailed knowledge of animal form and function, always be regarded as one of the primary sources of information about the welfare of animals. To take on this responsibility effectively and with a good conscience, students need to be aware of, sensitive to, and capable of managing the many welfare issues with which they will be confronted. On the other hand, there will be pressures on veterinarians, in particular financial ones, to act in ways that support their clients and are not necessarily in the animals’ best interests. Many of the animals that they treat are involved in an economic enterprise, for food production in particular, and the managers of these enterprises will often be required to take the course of action that maximizes profit, which may preclude expensive veterinary treatment. Similarly, the welfare of many companion animals may be compromised by both owners’ treatment requirements not matching those recommended by veterinarians and a surplus of animals in the community. Such dilemmas facing the veterinary student on graduation potentially lead to a disregard for the animals’ interests and consequent moral distress. Moral distress occurs “when one knows the right thing to do, but institutional or other constraints make it difficult to pursue the desired course of action” (Raines, 2000, p. 30). A UK study found that veterinary practitioners experience stressful ethical dilemmas regularly, with most reporting one or two ethical dilemmas weekly, and one-third of practitioners reporting three to five per week in relation to animal ethics issues (Batchelor and McKeegan, 2012). One way in which veterinary schools deal with this is to desensitize veterinary students to the animals’ interests. This is pursued by some staff in veterinary faculties because they perceive that it is necessary for students to cope with working in the animal industries and engaging in practices on animals that do not take full account of the animals’ interests, for example tail docking in dogs or cattle. Staff may be defensive about breeding animals specifically for surgery practice for students, or about using apparently unwanted animals for this purpose.

However, the animal welfare and/or ethics instructor is responsible for ensuring that all students graduate with sufficient knowledge, understanding, and skills of animal welfare and ethics (AWE) to equip them to deal with welfare issues, not minimize or avoid them. Animal ethics in this respect should not be confused with professional ethics, the former requiring us to consider how we should treat animals, the latter usually concerned with how we should act in accordance with the veterinary profession’s codes of conduct. To teach AWE, instructors need to be aware of the major animal welfare concerns in the most important animal industries, which include issues where it is expensive to provide adequately for the animals’ welfare, for example provision of pain relief to farm livestock when invasive procedures are conducted. The availability of adequate space is another major cause for concern, and so too are modifications to the animal to make it suit an economic production system, either by mutilating the body or by breeding for better performance, be it greater productivity, in the case of animals for food; greater appeal to the public, in the case of animals for companionship; or faster racing skills, in sport animals. Animal welfare and ethics educators can address these problems in two ways: they can attempt to describe all the major issues for all the industries, or they can attempt to draw out principles relating to the most common animal welfare problems, such as would emerge from an assessment of animal welfare in a dairy herd. Through these carefully chosen examples, they can analyze the problems that exist and how they can be addressed. The latter approach is advocated, since it teaches students to be proactive rather than just passively learn facts.

Veterinarians are seen as educators in animal welfare because of their expertise in animal-related topics, using their skills to teach their clients and the broader community about welfare issues. They are increasingly frequently becoming involved in public policy debates and in establishing appropriate regulatory frameworks to manage AWE to the satisfaction of the public. The One Welfare movement recognizes that human and animal welfare are closely linked (Dolby and Litster, 2015). Veterinarians can also take a preemptive role in developing local competitiveness between animal producers to enhance welfare (Pritchard et al., 2012), or in analyzing new initiatives to identify possible ethical issues before they become entrenched in practice (Vergés, 2010), thereby preventing considerable disruption and intransigence.

Veterinarians have responsibilities to their clients, animal consumers, and the public more generally, but their fundamental responsibility lies in maintaining animals in a good welfare state. Veterinarians may be faced with the ethical dilemma of whether to treat animals in a system that they believe cannot possibly provide good welfare, for example chickens in battery cages, or whether to allow someone else to do this. Their responsibility for animals’ welfare is shared with stockpeople, animal transporters, animal breeders, and a range of people with more limited roles in the provision of specific aspects of the animals’ life. The primacy of the animal welfare responsibilities of veterinarians is recognized in some countries by an oath sworn at graduation in which they promise to uphold the welfare of animals within their charge (WSAVA, 2015). As such, developing skills in animal welfare and ethical behavior toward animals may be seen as the ultimate objective of veterinary training, although secondary goals of improving public health, supporting a viable rural environment, and fostering good human–animal interactions must be acknowledged.

Veterinarians operate largely in a clinical setting, and animal welfare education is the fundamental goal of clinical skills training, which is currently being supported by the opening of clinical skills laboratories in many veterinary schools worldwide (Rösch et al., 2014). These are stocked with models and equipment for students to learn and practice key skills for treating animals, while maintaining a distance from the live animal for ethical reasons. Although some students fear that such opportunities could replace live animal practice, most students welcome the chance to improve their skills in tasks such as suturing, rectal examination, surgery, injection, ultrasound, obstetrics, blood sampling, X-ray, bandaging, and intubation (Rösch et al., 2014). Overuse of animals in veterinary colleges is a reality that should be regularly monitored by ethics committees. Development of skills through use of alternatives to live animals in teaching clinical examination and surgical practice are now an important part of animal welfare training (Capilé et al., 2015). Thus, veterinary educators have a responsibility for animal welfare and ethical practice in both veterinary training and practice.

The first reason that veterinarians must study AWE is that all sentient beings have needs and interests in survival and wellbeing, a fact that grounds ethics in science (Harris, 2010). The development of veterinary medicine was originally based on the need to consider the physical welfare of animals in order to maximize their usefulness to humans (Bones and Yeates, 2012). This personal interest approach has become increasingly questioned. Through keeping animals as companions and through scientific studies, animals have been found to have a wide range of similar emotions to humans (Panksepp, 1998), including moral emotions such as empathy, which have an evolutionary basis through various animal species (de Waal, 2009). Furthermore, we are more and more recognizing that animals have capacities that humans do not (Ford, 1999). We no longer question whether animals deserve moral consideration (Sapontzis, 1987; Wise, 2002), and discussion is growing over how they should be treated (Rollin, 2006b). Thus, veterinarians need to be at the forefront of knowledge and research into animals’ capabilities and to develop the skills for moral action. A universal principles approach (see Box 28.3) is ethically necessary, and tolerance of a multitude of other, less inclusive approaches is unreasonable.

The second reason for studying AWE is community expectation, or the new social ethic (Rollin, 2006a) regarding animals. Public concern for animal welfare is burgeoning as the animal industries intensify and production volumes increase in many countries. In conjunction with greater trade in other commodities, the long-distance trade in live animals is growing rapidly. The traditional curriculum for veterinarians, focused on basic and clinical sciences, animal handling and husbandry, diagnostics and surgery, is changing to incorporate areas of competence that will address the public concern for AWE.

The third reason is that veterinarians and veterinary students are indicating that they need it. In the UK study that identified regular exposure to moral distress in veterinary practice, 78% of respondents felt that they were not given enough (or in many cases any) ethics tuition during their training (Batchelor and McKeegan, 2012). In a study of Australian first- and fifth-year veterinary students (Verrinder and Phillips, 2014b), 96% agreed that they should be involved in the wider social issues of animal protection, 94% that the veterinary profession should be involved in addressing animal ethics issues, but only 33% considered that the veterinary profession was sufficiently involved. Also, 71% were morally motivated to put animals’ interests over the interests of their owners/carers, although those in the fifth year were less strongly in agreement than first-year students.

There is regional variation in the extent of the transition from the traditional curriculum to one that develops competencies in animal welfare and ethics. A European study identified a greater emphasis on such training in the northwest of the continent, in particular involving more interactive teaching (Illmann et al., 2014). These courses are better held before the extramural placements, so that students are better able to detect welfare problems on farms (Kerr, Mullan, and Main, 2013). There is also a growing focus on animal welfare assessment and animal law. Most students agree that AWE courses enable them to identify and deal with ethical dilemmas more effectively (Abood and Siegford, 2012). The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ Day One Competences 2014 include understanding the ethical and legal responsibilities of the veterinary surgeon in relation to patients, clients, society, and the environment; the ethical framework within which veterinary surgeons should work; and ethical theories that inform decision-making in professional and animal welfare-related ethics (RCVS, 2016). Veterinary medical education is increasingly providing training in nontechnical competence (Dolby and Litster, 2015), but the various aspects of animal welfare are not universally addressed in veterinary teaching. Graduating veterinarians are almost all good at understanding and treating the physical welfare issues, including infectious disease treatment and prevention, but psychological welfare issues are less well understood (Koch, 2009). However, a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of AWE gives students confidence in tackling animal welfare issues (Wu et al., 2015). Veterinary students have shown more concerned attitudes for animals used for profit or regarded as pests following animal welfare courses (Hazel, Signal, and Taylor, 2011).

Ethics teaching in veterinary courses is relatively new, but is growing internationally, albeit with considerable variation in what is taught, and how, and little consistency in ethics competencies (Magalhães-Sant’Ana et al., 2009, 2010; Morton, 2010). In many disciplines, including veterinary science, professional ethics teaching aims to develop ethical behavior toward people. However, the extent to which veterinary courses develop ethical behavior toward animals is unknown, despite this being central to the veterinary role. A major obstacle to the achievement of leadership in the veterinary profession addressing animal ethics issues is the reliance on a range of existing cultural perspectives on how animals should be treated (descriptive ethics), rather than universal principles (normative ethics). Consequently, students may finish veterinary school with a view that ethical decisions are based on personal choice, and that ethics is about tolerance of a range of conflicting perspectives. This provides little possibility for ethical direction and confidence in ethical decision-making. As well, “morality requires by definition the investment of knowledge in action” (Blasi, 1983, p. 205). Therefore, we advocate a more scientific approach to ethics teaching that includes the development of ethical behavior toward animals.

It is important that veterinary students understand key concepts such as the five freedoms and other broader concepts of welfare, including the five domains (Mellor and Beausoleil, 2015) and animals’ needs and capabilities (Nussbaum, 2001). Veterinary students also need to know the principles of and some methods of measuring animal welfare, especially those principles based on behavior, physiology, and animal production and product quality. It is particularly important that students understand the connections between good animal welfare and animal output. There are several online packages to assist in the teaching of AWE in veterinary schools, most notably the Concepts in Animal Welfare course produced by World Animal Protection (WSPA, 2003). Students should also be aware of the development and use of the Welfare Quality® Protocol (e.g., Gieseke et al., 2014). Veterinary students should understand the complexity of the human–animal bond, as well as the diverse ways in which animals interact with humans, both advantageous and disadvantageous. They must recognize the correct way to move animals, using low-stress animal management techniques.