PS6-1. Exploring How Practicing Swine Veterinarians Define Swine Welfare in the United States

Abstract Few topics in agriculture have drawn as much public attention as swine welfare. Swine veterinarians (SV) play a vital role in supporting producers during health and welfare decisions on-farm. The way SV think about and define welfare may influence these decisions. There is large body of literature exploring welfare, including measures that emphasize biological function to affective state. How a practicing SV thinks about pig welfare has not been considered. The objective of this study was to qualitatively explore how practicing SVs define swine welfare. A convenience sample of practicing SVs were recruited in the study. Interviews were conducted with 12 practicing SVs using Webex. Participants were asked, "What does swine welfare mean to you?” Following the question, demographic information was collected, and participants were assigned a number for confidentiality. An inductive approach was employed to identify recurring ideas, concepts, and terminology patterns that led to development of “codes”. Codes were reviewed, if 6 or more participants’ quotes were included these were consolidated into themes. One major theme emerged, "provision of food and water." When describing swine welfare, SV primarily focused on providing pigs with food and water, as reflected in these quotes "Okay, so swine welfare to me would be ensuring that the animals have proper food, water, and shelter, and that they're being observed daily and attended to daily” described SV1; “The lack of pain, harm, the ability to live comfortably and have access to necessary things like feed, water, air for them to survive and grow” said SV2; “Swine welfare to me means taking care of the needs of the pig, making sure that air feed, water and individual animal care needs are met on a daily basis,” said SV3; and “It's taking care of pig's needs. That's feed, water, air every day, doing it well. When pigs are not able to be or something comes up that affects one of those needs, we're addressing that in a immediate manner so that they experience good surroundings, good environment, access to the things that they need almost continuously or continuously preferably, if that makes sense.” said SV4. Although most SV described welfare in terms of provision of food and water, some mentioned ensuring comfort, appropriate environments, absence of pain and prompt care. These results show that the sampled SVs have a broad interpterion and understanding of swine welfare. While provision of food and water is included in accepted welfare definitions, welfare is a holistic concept encompassing physical and emotional states. This suggests additional training may help increase SV awareness of welfare’s holistic scope. Despite limited generalizability, these results highlight the importance of a larger scale quantitative investigation and could identify knowledge gaps and aid in training program development.