The Brambell Report

The welfare of animals is strictly connected to their needs, which have been synthetized by the Brambell Committee Report in 1965 as the "five freedoms" that must be assured to animals.

1) Freedom from hunger, from thirst and from malnutrition.
2) Freedom to the right to an adequate physical environment.
3) Freedom from injury.
4) Freedom to express the normal behavioral characteristics peculiar to the species.
5) Freedom from fear.

How is animal welfare to be measured?
Reference must be made to the studies on ethology, which deal in depth with animal behavior and therefore can define which are the essential needs of animals and are able to understand if there is a malaise and its degree.
The evaluation of the malaise must not be based on the physiological notions on which stands the old way of saying that "the animal is well if it eats and grows". It is necessary to get closer to the animal, see and observe its behavior and judge in accordance with it if we are giving it the chance to satisfy its needs completely or only partially or not at all. We will then know if we are generating a malaise and how deep such malaise is.

The aim of ethology is that of "putting oneself in the shoes" of animals in order to be able to judge the conditions of life from the point of view of their needs without the filter of economic interests, the habits and the personal convictions, more or less erroneous.
Truth requires that whoever wants to work for a moral goal must have as his only aim the welfare of animals. Any professional figure interested in drawing the coordinates that must be respected to guarantee the welfare of animals can only do it starting from the real needs of animals and not from those of the men who with these animals live or work or have fun.

If we consider the events that involve animals, we see that most people almost never understand the inherent problem.
To evaluate the malaise acccording to the ethological knowledge (as stated in article 727 of the Italian Penal Code), since in these situations animals are not allowed to express any behavior, because they are compelled to a behavior imposed by man, there are only two possibilities:

1. to find the clinical symptons of stress or
2. to adopt the measure to verify the respect of the five freedoms in total or in part.

Nobody can even think that in the majority of the events that use animals the freedom to the right to an adequate physical environment is respected.
The environment in which they are constrained is very far from the one in which they have the right to live.
Article 727 of the Italian Penal Code, quite more advanced in comparison to the other laws on animals, requires that animals must be kept in correspondence with their nature and according to their ethological needs.
Such wording, if applied in its integrity, implies the abolition of most of the activities in which man involves animals: conditions are not natural in transports, in shows, in fairs and in the competitions that use animals.

Every activity of man with animals passes over the needs of beings and imposes behaviors that are only in accordance with what he wants to obtain.