About the project
Project team: Prof Sam Hurn (PI), Dr Alexander Badman-King, Dr Fenella Eason, Dr Jessica Gröling, and Dr Emily Stone.
The use of animals as therapeutic tools to improve human wellbeing is widespread and has been the subject of much academic attention. Most existing research has focussed on the benefits to humans of interacting with animals, yet there is no extant research which has considered the impacts of interacting with animals classified as livestock on the attitudes of participants towards consuming animals of the same species following those interactions. As such, the research team aimed to find out more about the impact of interacting with the piglets beyond student wellbeing and stress reduction during and following a piglet interaction event on a university campus. Traditional companion animals (e.g. dogs, guinea pigs, horses) are most commonly used for animal assisted activities focussed on stress reduction, and these are animals who may already be familiar to participants. The research team investigated how interacting with a less familiar type of animal (piglets) impacts on how human participants think and feel about pigs after their encounter.
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Anthrozoology as Symbiotic Ethics 