Farmers have known for sometime that the most productive animals are those that experience minimal stress and a University of Illinois Department of Animal Sciences professor says in a new journal article that it's time to give the performance axiom more attention.

"An important issue in animal agriculture nowadays is the public demand for evidence that animals on farms and ranches are being treated humanely, that animal state of being (ASB) is high most of the time," explains Stan Curtis in the most recent issue of The Professional Animal Scientist.

Curtis says despite the importance of the issue, there's no consensus among scientists on how to prove ASB and the issue is in serious need of concerted attention.

It is not possible to objectively measure an animal's feelings in the laboratory, let alone in a production setting, Curtis said. Therefore, he contends objectively measurable animal performance traits are more valid indicators of ASB.

He says without the capacity to understand the animal's conscious feelings, the best indicators of that animal's state of being will be its rates of productive and reproductive performance relative to its predicted potential to perform.

Farmers have long recognized the effectiveness of performance as a measurement of ASB, Curtis adds.
"If scientists would recognize this and more attention were accorded the performance axiom, then the recognition of performance as an indicator of ASB would have been resurrected from an unfortunate hiatus that has lasted for several decades. The performance axiom would experience a Cinderella moment."

If progress is to be made in the assessment of ASB, Curtis concludes, the importance and use of objective measures of animal performance must be markedly increased.