One welfare a framework to improve animal welfare and human well-being

Introduction 9

Animal and human data sets are generally focused on disease surveil-

lance; however, there are big gaps when looking in detail at welfare and

well-being indicators. The deficiency makes it challenging to analyse sci-

entifically correlations between animal welfare, environmental and human

well-being data. In many cases it can act as a barrier for recognition of

existing interconnections, which are often demonstrated anecdotally.

Complementing One Health with an explicit welfare component helps to

highlight the importance of this element and supports the build-up and ex-

pansion of more holistic data sets. This can lead to a better and more ro-

bust evidence base that will result in more efficient interventions and better

transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration.

For example, there are established links between ecosystems, poverty

and health interactions, and evidence showing that, in developing countries,

human sickness is a major cause of falling into and remaining in poverty

(Grace, 2016). This is also likely to affect animal welfare, when those hu-

mans falling ill have animals under their care and are unable to look after

them or provide food. The concept of One Welfare highlights these deeper

connections and enables additional tools to help address complex multifac-

torial scenarios.

The illegal bushmeat trade has been flagged as a threat to both biodiver-

sity and public health under the One Health framework (Chaber, 2016).

There are, however, human well-being issues connected to illegal activities –

and possibly to poverty situations too – as well as animal welfare issues

in terms of how bushmeat animals are captured and slaughtered that are

often neither exposed nor discussed. Complementing One Health with One

Welfare will help to expose and address these types of issues.

In relation to biodiversity and ecosystems, the interrelationship between

health and the environment has several angles, such as:

• the influence of biodiversity on disease transmission, where increased

biodiversity can have a diluting effect on human transmission of vec-

tor-borne and zoonotic disease; however, the chance of introducing

super-spreader species might increase the human risk;

• the influence of environmental and landscape homogenization on dis-

ease dynamics;

• food security and the impacts of changing biogeochemical cycles on

human and system health (Cumming and Cumming, 2015).

To date, the One Health concept has been mainly an approach for health

researchers and practitioners at the human, animal and environmental inter-

faces to work together to mitigate the risks of emerging and re-emerging infec-

tious diseases. This concept was envisaged and implemented as a collaborative

global approach to understanding risks for human and animal health (including

both domestic animals and wildlife) and ecosystem health as a whole.