The Istituto G. Caporale in Australia for Animal Welfare

A veterinarian of the Animal Welfare Research Centre of Istituto G. Caporale, dr. Antonio Di Nardo, participated, only Italian delegate, to two important Animal Welfare conferences held in Australia on mid July 2009.

On the 10th of July he presented the results of a project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Health and developed together with the University of Pennsylvania, at the 43rd International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE)

Conference in Cairns, Queensland.

In the section "Human/animal interactions" he showed preliminary results of the research "Assessing dog aggressiveness: validation of a behavioural test using the C-barq questionnaire" which lead to a behavioural test, scientifically validated, that could be used as a robust tool to evaluate dog aggressiveness within the family members.

On 13th of July dr. Antonio Di Nardo presented a study entitled "Cost Benefit analysis of management options for free roaming dog populations in Abruzzo, Italy" on the Minding Animals Conference in Newcastle, New South Wales.

The study, which is also a part of the research program of the Italian Ministry of Health, was developed together with the Veterinary National Institute of Oslo, Norway, and it is based on the development of a mathematical model able to describe the dynamics of the free roaming dog population in relation to different selected management options and to compare the outputs in terms of animal welfare, nuisance to public and monetary cost over a five years period.