412 | Pleasure and Animal Welfare unsatisfying job, produces negative attitude towards them among the personnel, and a vicious circle occurs Improvement both in welfare and in performance can be reliably achieved by educating the personnel about the principles of pig behavior and positive ways to handle them Transport: Transportation is stressful to pigs The strain may be severe or even fatal if pigs also experience exposure to extreme temperatures, long durations without water, food, and rest, mixing with alien pigs, overcrowding, and slippery floors Regulation concerning animal transport are being gradually imposed, but unacceptable practices are still common, often in defiance of existing regulations Slaughter: Most industrialized countries require instantaneous stunning of pigs before slaughtering It is the preslaughter handling and housing of pigs rather than the slaughter itself that causes considerable suffering because of its large scale, total anonymity, and the tendency among the personnel to depreciate the suffering Education and setting firm standards for procedures and equipment can eliminate unnecessary suffering at slaughterhouses Further Reading Appleby, M C., and Hughes, B O 1997 Animal welfare Wallingford: CAB International European Food Safety Authority 2007 Animal health and welfare aspects of different housing and husbandry systems for adult breeding boars, pregnant, farrowing sows and unweaned piglets[1]—Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Animal Health and Welfare The EFSA Journal 572, 1–13 Faucitano, L., and Schaeffer, A L 2008 Welfare of pigs From birth to slaughter Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers Marchant-Forde, J M 2009 The welfare of pigs New York: Springer Velarde, A., and Geers, R 2007 On farm monitoring of pig welfare Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers Writing of this contribution was supported by Grant #MZE0002701402 Marek Špinka PLEASURE AND ANIMAL WELFARE The desire to feel good dictates much of what we in our lives The foods we eat, our choice of companions, our career choices, and our hobbies all can bring feelings ranging from satisfaction to joy While it may be more important to avoid pain and suffering where we can, it is the pursuit of pleasures that fills more of our waking time Despite its central place in our lives and, as I shall argue, in the lives of other animals, the study of pleasure has suffered neglect Today, the titles of at least nineteen scholarly English-language journals contain the word pain, yet there are no journals dedicated to the study of pleasure The neglect of pleasure has been even more profound in the study of animals One reason for this is that pleasures are so-called private experiences, and therefore difficult to demonstrate clearly, especially in another being who doesn’t use our sort of language Also, for much of the last century it was considered bad science to even suggest that nonhuman animals were conscious or had feelings Fortunately, in recent decades, the momentum has shifted, and time is now ripe for the pursuit of pleasure to be understood as an important element of animals’ day-to-day lives, as it is for ours The Basis for Animal Pleasure Pleasure is a product of evolution There are good reasons that sentience, the awareness of pain and pleasure, evolved Because animals, unlike plants, are able