Health and Welfare Implications into Importing Horses into China

Zhang, Yayue (2019) Health and Welfare Implications into Importing Horses into China. Masters thesis, University of Gloucestershire / Royal Agricultural College.

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Abstract

This study was conducted in order to identify the issues of the welfare of imported horse in China and suggest some recommendations for future consideration by investigating the situation within the industry, using targeted interviews with club owners, horse trainers, stable managers, leading riders and veterinarians of various of riding clubs in China. The study used a mixed methods approach to including interviews to ascertain some quantitative data about the number of horses imported in selected clubs as well as a reflective approach to analyse the perception of husbandry and welfare practices: the quantitative part and the qualitative part. The former aims to evaluate the health and welfare standard of keeping horses in China through using scientific researches as reference, which will be written in the scientific way. The second part aims to evaluate welfare awareness in China using Interpretative phenomenology analysis (IPA), which will be written from the first-person perspective. In this part, the researcher’s own journey of becoming reflexive will be involved to suggest how the journey has changed her and what difficulty has been encountered during the study. IPA is employed to examine the interviewees’ true attitude towards equine welfare, as well as how personal experience could have cultural impacts on opinions towards those attitudes. In general, the result suggested that the equine welfare in China could be improved in its horse importation process, isolation standard, feeding plan, stable design, horse training, body conditional score and disease treatment. The Chinese equine welfare is facing the problem of land limitation, lack of restriction, lack of action and lack of awareness. The study also suggested that the veterinary condition in China was poor due to the generation gap formed with the introducing of Licensed veterinary Qualification examination in 2009, vets’ superiority, underdeveloped clinical facilities, equine hospital number shortage and unethical diagnosing process. Through the medium of equine welfare and the growing equine industry, the researcher has become reflexive with the recognition of cultural barriers, and husbandry and welfare shortfalls. This resulted in a unique and inconclusive example of how an ordinary Chinese student learn to understand equine welfare concepts which could be used as a successful example of overcoming culture barrier and develop welfare awareness. This is meaningful for the future development of Chinese equine welfare.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Additional Information:	MSc by Research
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Animal welfare, China; Imported horses
Subjects:	S Agriculture > SF Animal culture
Depositing User:	Susan Turner
Date Deposited:	24 Jul 2019 15:23
Last Modified:	01 Aug 2021 21:47
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/6957

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