prof.dr.ir. TB (Bas) Rodenburg

prof.dr.ir. TB (Bas) Rodenburg

Special Professor Animal Welfare

The research of Bas Rodenburg aims at improving the methodology for assessment of animal welfare. Rodenburg mainly wants to focus on behavioural indicators and methods where the animals themselves are ‘asked’ how they experience their livening conditions. A second important area is the study of behaviour and welfare of individual animals housed in social groups. Through automatic tracking of individual animals, Rodenburg aims to obtain a better understanding of social behaviour and use this information to improve health and welfare of group-housed animals. Rodenburg’s current research is mainly aimed towards the development of methods to measure behaviour and welfare of individual animals in groups. The area of Precision Livestock Farming is developing rapidly. These developments also allow better monitoring tools for individual animals. Using those methods allows detailed study of social behaviour and of health and welfare of specific individuals. His future research will also aim at the development of behavioural indicators that are indicative of animal welfare and the development of methods that allow to ‘ask’ the animals how they experience their living conditions. This will for instance be done by preference testing and cognitive bias testing. In a cognitive bias test, it can be assessed whether an animal is positive or negative about its living conditions. Together with the Centre for Sustainable Animal Stewardship (CenSAS) Rodenburg also wants to enter the dialogue with Dutch society on animal welfare.