Date: Thursday, 7th September 2023
Venue: Syed Nazrul Islam Conference Hall, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, livestock production is a significant and vital part of socioeconomic structure and is essential to the country's growth, progress, and prosperity. It contributes for generating jobs, empowering women, improving household nutrition, reducing poverty, increasing export revenue, and providing fuel in the form of renewable energy and organic manure. At a growth rate of 3.1%, livestock contributes roughly 1.9% of the nation's Gross Domestic Products (GDP). The livestock contributes roughly 16.5% of the Agricultural GDP. The GDP amount is BDT 671.9 billion. Around 80 % of the population is thought to be connected to the livestock industry directly or indirectly. By increasing productivity while also generating revenue and jobs that guarantee access to food, livestock helps to secure food security here in Bangladesh. There are 24.7 million cattle, 1.6 million buffaloes, 26.7 million goats, and 3.75 million sheep, all of which are categorized as large animals. Nevertheless, the majority of the country's poultry is chicken and duck in total 375.6 million (Approx.) (Department of Livestock Services, 2022). Regardless of the species, the large farm home had the greatest number of animals and birds. The nation as a whole is becoming more interested in setting up commercial livestock companies, such as fattening cattle, dairy farms, goat and sheep farms, poultry, duck farms, etc.

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Common people here in Bangladesh are still unaware and uneducated of the fact that animal welfare does exist in a formal format, though the parliament of Bangladesh replaced the century- old Cruelty to Animals Act of 1920 with the new Animal Welfare Act of 2019. Even government of Bangladesh is not properly informed due to communication gap, therefore, limited rules and policy implementation from government and there are no organizational capabilities on this issue. This scenario is because of shortage of professional experts of animal welfare and lack of reliable empirical data on it. The challenges are occupied like a chain where farmers only care about profit, veterinary and other practitioners are not aware of animal pain and government is not implementing and monitoring the rules and regulations in favour of animal welfare. Thus, it is essential to spread the knowledge of animal welfare to livestock stakeholders, particularly who are taking care of animal health and wellbeing for example Vet students, academics and researcher.

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ISAE started to work in this region from the last year through a successful ISAE Animal Welfare Workshop, in the University of Rajshahi. Nowadays, people are in a stage of considering animal behaviour and welfare issues. Government approving research grants in order to work on Animal behaviour and welfare. It’s never been happened before ISAE workshop of 2022. Veterinary and Animal Science graduates also getting interested to work on animal behaviour and welfare.