Adult dogs, especially elderly ones, are commonly affected by prostate diseases. Performing rectal palpation during physical examination in dogs is important in small animal clinical diagnosis. Prostate palpation training allows students to learn how to correctly introduce the finger into the rectum and identify the location, size, symmetry, and consistency of the prostate. Alternative methods are needed to teach this technique without using live dogs. Thus, our aim was to develop a canine prostate palpation simulator to provide students with the opportunity to learn the prostate palpation technique in dogs and to assess their opinion of this simulator as a teaching tool. The inner part of the canine mannequin contains a rotation system with three types of prostates that can be exchanged during the exam. Of the 64 participating students, 81% had never used alternative methods and 92.2% had never performed any prostatic palpation. According to the students' opinions, performing a clinical examination on a simulator allowed them to be prepared and familiarized with the palpation technique. They felt satisfied learning a practical method in a harmless way. Both the 3R (replacement, reduction, and refinement) and dog welfare principles were present in most of the students' concerns. We conclude that the simulator can help students to develop clinical skills for prostate palpation in dogs.

There are, in the literature, distinct ways to approach animal welfare. The objective of this work was to study the value attributed to farm animals in the scientific papers published in animal welfare and animal production journals at three different points in time, separated by a decade each. The first ten papers mentioning “animal welfare” or “animal well-being” in their objectives or hypotheses from each journal and each focus year were selected. The 180 papers were blindly scored by five assessors between 1 and 10, according to the degree of intrinsic value attributed to animals. The overall mean score and standard deviation were 5.60 ± 2.49, with 6.46 ± 2.29 and 4.74 ± 2.40 for AW and AP journals, respectively, and 5.37 ± 2.44, 5.68 ± 2.52 and 5.75 ± 2.41 for the focus years of 2000, 2010 and 2020, respectively. There was an interaction between focus year and publication area: papers from AW journals scored better over time, in contrast with papers from AP journals, for which scores remained similar over decades. The inter-assessor agreement is moderate, which may reflect the subject complexity, as the language used in the papers studied was ambiguous in relation to why and for whom it is performed. The low overall mean score evidenced that the animal welfare scientific publications are, on average, not prioritizing the interests of the animals. Thus, our results evidenced the presence of animal welfarism in animal welfare science, a problem that seems not to be intrinsic to animal welfare science itself, but rather to the way research is frequently conceived, conducted, interpreted, summarized and applied. Therefore, it seems urgent to further study the motivation for animal welfare research. The statement of the main justification for animal welfare papers, with an explicit declaration of the motivational priorities that constitute each scientific animal welfare study, may be an interesting recommendation for the improvement of animal welfare science.

Food packages must communicate mandatory information, but they can also be used for marketing practices such as promotion and are a communication pathway from industry to consumer. Considering that cows are the main beings affected by the dairy industry, it is essential to scrutinise what dairy product packages convey about them. The aims of this study are to analyse the occurrence of reference to cows on the packaging of dairy products in popular supermarket retail stores in Brazil and the United Kingdom and to discuss ethical implications of promotional practices of dairy producers. We found that in both countries most packaging does not refer to cows at all. In the UK, an average of 31% of the packaging used some visual reference to cows, and in Brazil an average of 15% of packaging used some visual reference to cows. We identified four modalities of cow signifiers with a strong common appeal to nature that reflect and reaffirm an idyllic narrative of milk production. Our findings reflect the concept of absent referent, coined by Carol Adams, both on the packages containing some type of cow representation and on the packages not containing any. Considering that it might influence the consumer’s understanding and attitude towards cows, we highlight that the lack of adequate information about cows’ conditions and the obscuring of problematic issues in cows’ exploitation through the globalization of the happy cow narrative are two important issues to be placed on the Marketing Ethics concerns.

The Brazilian government has published a resolution that bans animal use in some practical classes within undergraduate and high school technical education from April 2019. Resolution No. 38/2018, issued by the National Council for the Control of Animal Experimentation (CONCEA), bans the killing of animals for dissection purposes and animal experiments in practical classes that do not involve the acquisition of new skills. The initial call for the ban was by the Brazilian Network for Humane Education (RedEH), an independent body comprising Brazilian professors and international collaborators dedicated to the implementation of replacement alternatives in education. The call was supported by InterNICHE, and many professors and other international organisations. The Brazilian Council of Veterinary Medicine, which is responsible for regulating the veterinary profession in Brazil, also stated its support for humane education and for the ban. The call was the first formal request, and it eventually led to the first legal resolution for the replacement of animal use in education in Brazil. This represents an important historic landmark in the advancement of science education.

Despite the predominance of traditional teacher-centered approaches, educators are constantly changing paradigms and social boundaries, by stimulating criticism with active learning based approaches, which are centered on contexts and experiences. Viewing students as individuals enables paradigm changes and inspires new perspectives on established theories and facts. This chapter discusses education in Brazil, with a focus on humane education. Humane education strives to foster compassion and respect for humans, nonhuman animals (hereinafter referred to as animals), and the environment by creating awareness of the needs of others and the effects of our actions. In this chapter we describe the process of humane education in the context of animals used for teaching. We explore the possibilities of replacing animals and including ethical discussions in the curriculum; the history of Brazilian humane education, considering the Environmental Crimes Act that forbids animal use when alternative methods exist; and the legislation that controls the use of animals for research and teaching purposes in Brazil.