The obesity problem in the world is growing bigger and today even our companion animals are becoming heavier. In this paper the importance of a balanced diet for the companion animal is emphasised. There are many disadvantages for the animal and for the owner if the animal becomes obese and it is important to stress the facts on what the consequences might be. There are several medical conditions connected to obesity and a short summary of these will be discussed. It is often easier to prevent obesity rather than loosing the overweight and some ideas of how to do this is looked in to. In many veterinary clinics today, the veterinary nurse is the first and sometimes the only person to see the animal.

X-rays are a potential risk for animal health care personnel. The present study will examine the risks for scattered radiation to the personnel, if no lead gloves are used when holding an animal during the x-ray examination. Furthermore, how the impact of the exposure values and body parts examined, affect the scattered dose to the hands of the holder. Also, the distance between the animal and the hand that holds it was evaluated to see the impact on scattered radiation exposure. Tested by a survey, to animal health care students, the frequency of the usage of lead gloves in Swedish animal hospitals was studied. According to the results from the analysis, animal health care personnel don't need to use lead gloves every time they hold an animal or a cassette during x-ray examinations.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ongoing changes in German family policy. It explores the issue of whether the German welfare state, in this policy field, can still be regarded as a conservative welfare model or rather approaches a more liberal or social democratic model. A qualitative method is used to analyze the material, especially from the German government, including press releases, other public documents and also articles from the political weekly magazines Der Spiegel and Die Zeit. The changes analyzed are the new parental benefit, the expansion of child care, the concept of whole-day schools and the system of joint taxation. The point of departure is Gösta Esping-Andersen?s categorization of three types of welfare states: the social democratic, the conservative and the liberal.

Beef cattle wintering outdoors should be provided a shelter, e.g. a type of barn or corresponding. This type of production requires appropriate soil types and secured animal welfare. For example, a clean and dry resting place needs to be provided to the animals. To receive an exemption for buildings the farmer has to have something equivalent that provides an adequate shelter.

This bachelor thesis aimed to explore, in a qualitative manner, the relationship and the interaction between the hospital welfare officer and the rest of the nursing staff. We chose this subject because we wanted to explain the phenomena of being a medical outsider in the nursing team. Our questions at issue were the following three: How does the hospital welfare officer define his occupational sphere and how do the rest of the nursing staff define it, according to the welfare officer himself? Is the welfare officer's relation to his own professional role and to the rest of the nursing staff affected by where his office is placed - secluded from or within the clinic? How does the welfare officer himself value his profession in relation to the rest of the nursing crew? To answer these questions we interviewed eight welfare officers, placed in two different hospitals. We used three different theories to explain the primary information.

Feral animal populations are distributed over many parts of the world and are often seen as a problem. Since they are a threat against other species, destroy farmlands and can spread dis-eases, they are often referred to as pests. Artificial selection has contributed to loss of genetic diversity in our domesticated animals. Feral animal populations are affected by natural selec-tion, which allows them to adapt to the environment. Their ability to adapt is a reason to see them as pests but can also be seen as an asset.

For centuries inbreeding has been used to refine traits in dogs, making desired traits more hereditary and thereby, different breeds have been invented. Breed standards have been written for each of these breeds, describing in detail the different characteristics of each breed. When humans start to choose which animal to breed from, so called artificial selection, taste is put before function and the laws of nature, the natural selection, cease to apply. During this development, pedigree dogs have gone towards more and more extreme exterior characteristics and the dogs may have inherited various, more or less, severe problems for example compromised vision, impaired ability to move and difficulties to breathe. However they can still survive and reproduce because humans provide them with the conditions to do so.

The Swedish ostrich production started about thirteen years ago and still there are no Swedish recommendations regarding ostriches? space requirements. The European Council give recommendations and the Swedish Board of Agriculture (SJV) has a proposal, but so far the producers follow Danish regulations regarding space requirements. The Swedish Animal Welfare Agency are about to set standards for the ostriches? space requirements, and therefore the Swedish ostrich producers, together with The Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF) ask for a scientific background to these decisions. This thesis is a preliminary study at the prospect of a future experiment on which factors important for ostriches? space requirements and welfare will be examined more thouroughly.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the kind of support society offer parents, by illuminating some of the parent education programs which are arranged by social services. By interviewing some of those who are involved in these education programs, we tried to figure out what society would like to mediate as good parenting.Our main questions was:* Why are parental education needed in society of today?* What are the purpose of the education?* For whose sake are these educations arranged, for the childrens, the parents or in public interest.* This model which you are using, what would it like to mediate as most important in good parenting.We found that the respondents all agreed that the main purpose of these educations was to improve the relationship between parents and children. However they all pointed out the fact that there are great gains in public finances to do as well..

Aim: The aim of this paper was to investigate whether scientific evidence exists to improve, of students? perceived, insufficient infection control in isolation facilities in companion animal hospitals in Sweden. Material and methods: A question was emailed to the students in the last year of the animal nursing program at SLU in the spring 2012 to get their view of perceived insufficient infection control. A literature study was thereafter preformed using the search engine Web of Knowledge. Results: The students reported several perceived shortcomings which were divided into five categories: basal hygiene, isolation routines, cleaning and disinfection, patient flow and other. Studies supporting that the shortcomings perceived by the students also exist in human health care and to some extent in animal clinics and hospitals were found. Furthermore, scientific evidence that improved hand hygiene, glove procedures and cleaning and disinfection reduces the risk of nosocomial infections in humans was reported. Conclusion: There is not a lot of research performed in the area of infection control in animal nursing.

This is an examinaton of welfare officers and patients experiences of a course in mindfulnessbased stressreduction in primary care. The authors used a qualitative method and a phenomenological hermeneutics scientific philosophical position. The analys of the data appeared by using three theoretical perspectives; cognitive, coping and Antonovskys Sence of Coherence. The purpose was to get a deeper understanding of what mindfulness is, how a course in mindfulnessbased stressreduction can be arranged and how it is comprehended by the welfare officers and previous participators of the course. To get an opinion of the issue the authors wanted to know the welfare officers intention of the course, to which patients they provide the course, what the participators thought about their situation before and after the attendence and if they had assimilated the knowledge and if so how it was applicable.

Postmodernism and neo-liberalism is often thought of as two opposite conceptions of the reality and the world. This thesis takes on a critical view of this assertion and the main purpose was to perform a correlation between postmodernism and neo-liberalism. With different theoretical assumptions about constructions of thoughts, agency and structure and the welfare-state a theoretical framework was created. According to this framework the two isms were correlated to each other and the welfare-state to see if there where similarities or dissimilarities between the isms. The assumptions of this thesis are that there are correlations between postmodernism and neo-liberalism in the constructions of thoughts, namely similar view on epistemology.

Transportation of pigs might be a welfare problem. Stress during and after transportation can negatively affect the meat quality or cause carcass damages, which leads to major economic losses every year. The transportation chain can be divided into several stages; loading, transport and unloading. This literature review focuses on unloading of pigs from a transport. When arriving at an abattoir pigs can be fatigued and need to be as smoothly unloaded as possible.

There are several ways in which people can relate to eating or not eating animals. This essay is focussing two main strategies: Making distances and drawing borders.Today, there are several reasons for not eating meat, including environmental reasons, individual and public health reasons, ethical reasons and more. Yet, people eat more meat than ever. According to the UN, this is a major problem. In 2006 the report Livestock?s long shadow pointed out that meat consumption was a bigger problem from an environmental point of view, than global transports, including air-traffic.

In the debate on laying hen welfare, and specifically housing conditions, the main focushas been on physiological and behavioural measures. What is lacking is knowledge of howthe hen experiences the situation ? her state of mind.This study is an attempt to gain insight into the private mental states of former batteryhens. It uses a cognitive bias method based on spatial judgement, i.e. judgement of aambiguous stimulus placed spatially in between a reinforced and an unreinforced stimulus.This method has previously shown differences in judgement by animals in enriched versuspoor housing.