Welcome to this online symposium on Humanely Ending the Life of Animals. Finding the most humane way to end the life of animals slaughtered for food or killed after they have been used in biomedical research is a fundamental problem in animal welfare which is also highly contentious. There is a lack of consensus on which methods cause the least possible suffering. One of the most commonly used methods to kill both livestock (pigs and poultry) and laboratory rodents, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) gas, is particularly contentious. Whilst it is widely accepted that exposure to CO2 causes some welfare compromise, the severity of this and the improvement offered by alternatives is hotly debated. The viability of alternatives is also a contentious issue - many potentially humane alternatives are regarded by many as impractical.

The Swiss Federal Veterinary Office (FSVO) has organised two previous meetings to examine the current scientific evidence regarding the humaneness of CO2 and potential alternatives, and to map out the future research priorities necessary to fill the current gaps in our knowledge. This strategy formed the basis of a paper - Humanely Ending the Life of Animals: Research Priorities to Identify Alternatives to Carbon Dioxide.

In this third meeting the FSVO has partnered with two animal welfare charities – the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW ) and the Humane Slaughter Association (HSA) to provide an update on the latest scientific developments in the field which we hope will contribute to filling some of the knowledge gaps.

We are very grateful to the speakers for their participation and for adapting their talks to an online format at short notice as well as to the organising committee (Daniel Weary, Robert Meyer, Claudio Zweifel, Thom Gent and Ngaio Beausoleil) for their dedication to bringing this meeting to fruition. We thank you for registering for the meeting and hope you find the two days informative.

Ingrid Kohler
Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office FSVO, Switzerland

Huw Golledge
Chief Executive Officer – UFAW and HSA, United Kingdom
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Day 1 - Livestock. Session 1

Session Chairs: Claudio Zweifel (Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office, Switzerland) and Ngaio Beausoleil (Massey University, New Zealand)

• Welcome
Kaspar Joerger (Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office, Switzerland)
• Introduction and background to the meeting
Huw Golledge (UFAW and HSA, United Kingdom) and Aline Steiner (University of Zürich, Switzerland)
• Keynote: Where there's will, there is a way
Mohan Raj (Independent, United Kingdom)
• Asking chickens about feelings under exposure to CO2 and alternatives to CO2. Novel animal model using broiler breeders
Sabine Gebhardt-Henrich, Abdulsatar Abdel Rahman, Thom Gent and Michael Toscano (Universities of Bern and Zurich, Switzerland; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden)
• A novel stunning method of pigs with high expansion nitrogen foam: An initial study
Cecilia Lindahl (Agriculture and Food, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Sweden)

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