Sophie Brajon

1. IntroductionWith increasing public awareness regarding pig welfare, gestating sow housing systems are currently changing around the world to group-housing. While the legislation on sows’ group-housing was adopted in 2001 in Europe, the new Canadian regulation was enacted in 2014. The Canadian Code of Practice for the care and handling of pigs requires that all newly built facilities or th ...

IntroductionDomestic animals are considered to be sentient and endowed with cognitive and emotional abilities. The fact that domestic animals can experience emotional states has resulted in developing methods for welfare assessment and monitoring. However, animal welfare legislation often focusses on housing and management conditions and less on how people behave and interact with them. Yet h ...

IntroductionDue to considerable changes in the pig industry worldwide in favour to groups-housing systems, understanding social behaviour of pigs and its impact on welfare has become increasingly important. The wild counterparts of pigs are highly gregarious and form complex hierarchical structures of multigenerational and matrilineal social units centered around several philopatric females a ...