It’s nearly impossible to explain the history of animal welfare research in the United States without mentioning Joy Mench, Ph.D., a longtime animal behavior research professor at University of California Davis.
That rule certainly applies to the development of the Certified Humane® program. Joy was one of the founding scientists and veterinarians whom Adele Douglass Jolley recruited to adopt farm animals certification standards for the United States market.
“We had a really good group of people working together,” said Joy as she recalled those early days, now more than 20 years ago. “We each brought different kinds of expertise. I’m the poultry expert, but we had people who had expertise in swine, cattle and other species.”
The group grew in number as time went on. The Scientific Committee now boasts more than 40 experts in animal science and welfare.
But in the beginning, the group was only a handful of animal scientists and veterinarians. And they were all women. Joy remembered that fact distinctly.
“The field of animal welfare was pretty women-dominated,” she said. “There were just a lot more women working in the area, so that was probably part of it.”
The way Adele remembered it, as she reflected during the organization’s 20th anniversary, the group was all women because only women replied to her call to create a new certification program.
“I would believe that,” Joy said with a laugh. “Women are very service-minded.”
The animal welfare movement
Joy describes Adele as an old friend, whom she met while she was a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park. Adele was a lobbyist for American Humane, pushing for more animal welfare regulations on Capitol Hill, and Joy was an advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Adele was frustrated by the lack of progress in Congress. She approached Joy and others for help with a different approach — developing a voluntary program that would encourage American shoppers to choose better animal care practices with the weight of their spending power.
“It was very, very visionary,” Joy said. “We didn’t have anything like that in the United States at the time.”
Joy herself was a trailblazer in her own right, claiming some of the first animal welfare research positions in the United States.
In her decades of research, she’s authored 160 publications on animal behavior and welfare and edited a half a dozen textbooks on the topic.
She got an early jump into the career, pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Sussex right after earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from San Francisco State University. As she began her studies in the United Kingdom, she knew she was interested in studying bird behavior.
It just so happened that the first bird she ended up studying was a chicken.
At the time, there was a growing interest in farm animal welfare in England. Joy found herself at the forefront of research in understanding the feelings and behaviors of animals.
“I got really interested in applying my knowledge of animal behavior toward improving the lives of animals,” she said.
After earning her Ph.D. in ethology (animal behavior) and neurobiology, Joy got what she describes as a series of “lucky” breaks. The first was claiming a postdoc research position at Cornell University, one of the first animal welfare research positions in the United States.
The second was claiming the nation’s first professorship in animal welfare. Joy served as a professor in poultry welfare at the University of Maryland College Park for 10 years before accepting a position at UC Davis, where she stayed for the rest of her career.
What does “humane” mean?
Joy experienced her first commercial poultry farm during a research project at Cornell University. The experimental study centered on researching different kinds of housing systems for laying hens, exploring cages versus pens, which allowed the chickens more freedom of movement.
Up to that point, Joy’s farming experience was limited to occasional visits to her uncle’s small family farm in Iowa. Her uncle had a few chickens, some pigs and a few cattle, and Joy remembered how she loved interacting with the animals.
A commercial chicken farm was a different experience.
“Because of the enormous size, it’s a bit of a shock to see so many animals kept together in one space,” Joy said.
To this day, the United States doesn’t provide federal regulation for how animals are treated on any farm — not for commercial operations nor the smaller farms like the one Joy’s uncle oversaw. That’s what made Adele’s idea so visionary.
“To have an independent third-party body coming out looking at farmers’ operations to see how the animals are treated was a very new concept,” Joy said.
That continues to be a strength in the Certified Humane® program, Joy said. As a teacher at University of California Davis, Joy regularly taught two classes: Animal Welfare and Ethics of Animal Use. In both, she taught her students how scientific research informed the basis for animal care standards used by programs like Certified Humane®.
But Joy also taught them to explore and discuss the ethics of raising farm animals.
“People in our society have very different views about what words like ‘humane’ mean. There’s no set definition for that term,” Joy said.
That’s why it’s important that Certified Humane®’s Farm Animal Standards are transparent, defining exactly how farm animals under the program are treated. That allows shoppers to make an informed decision in the grocery aisle based on their own ethics.
Bravery during a “sensitive” time
Creating the basis for new standards in the United States started by exploring farms in the United Kingdom. Joy was a full-time professor at UC Davis when she traveled with Adele and a small group of women scientists to learn from the Freedom Foods program, developed by Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).
“We toured farms in the United Kingdom, seeing types of commercial farms,” Joy said.
Many of the animal welfare practices they saw in action on those larger farms could only be found on small family farms in the United States. It was important for the group to confirm the scientific basis for and feasibility of applying each standard before including it in the new program.
The Freedom Foods program became the group’s template. Still, it took time and quite a few meetings to develop standards for the U.S. market. It was important for the group to confirm the scientific basis for each standard before adopting it into the new program.
The new program operated for three years under American Humane Association, with Brenda Coe, Ph.D., acting as its director of animal science programs. When Adele parted ways with American Humane to launch a nonprofit focused on farm animal welfare, Joy supported her, joining the Scientific Committee for the new organization.
In May 2003, Adele officially launched Humane Farm Animal Care, the nonprofit that still oversees the Certified Humane® program.
Joy was the only member of the Scientific Committee who attended the media announcement.
“I do remember that. There was a lot of — shall we say — sensitivity about this program being launched,” Joy said. “People didn’t really understand what it was and how it was going to function and what the implications of it were. So there was nervousness.”
“The industry has changed since those early years. These days, farmers and ranchers are more open to auditing programs and third-party standards in general,” Joy said. Some industries even have their own programs, proving the need for certifications that shoppers can trust.
Certified Humane’s standards are designed to be living documents, Joy explained. The role of the Scientific Committee is to update the standards as new research changes the scientific consensus on best practices for healthy, thriving farm animals.
The behavior of dogs and elephants
Joy retired from the Scientific Committee in 2023 — several years after retiring as a full-time professor at UC Davis. In retirement, she traveled and explored the wider world of animal behavior, looking for polar bears in the Arctic tundra and watching wolves in Yosemite National Park.
The adventures were fun, but she missed teaching at UC Davis.
“I really missed my involvement with students. I got a little bored after a few years,” Joy said. “So it’s nice to be back teaching.”
Her first class as an emeritus professor was a freshman course, not on chickens or farm animals, but on the behavior of dogs.
“We had a class that nobody was teaching, and I thought that would be fun,” Joy said with a laugh.
Of course, Joy has researched animal behavior off the farm many times before. She’s done studies on the behavior of laboratory animals used in research, like rodents and rabbits. Her last big research project before retiring at UC Davis was two years tracking the health and behavior of every single elephant living in a North American zoo.
“We studied about 300 elephants, looking at how their welfare was affected by the social group that they were in, the size of their enclosure and other factors,” she said.
That’s what keeps animal behavior and animal welfare so interesting to study and explore, she explained.
“You have to understand your species. But the principles of how you apply behavior to understanding welfare are universal across all species,” Joy said.
The legacy of Dr. Joy Mench, trailblazing animal behavior scientist
Posted: August 7, 2024 by Certified Humane®
It’s nearly impossible to explain the history of animal welfare research in the United States without mentioning Joy Mench, Ph.D., a longtime animal behavior research professor at University of California Davis.
That rule certainly applies to the development of the Certified Humane® program. Joy was one of the founding scientists and veterinarians whom Adele Douglass Jolley recruited to adopt farm animals certification standards for the United States market.
“We had a really good group of people working together,” said Joy as she recalled those early days, now more than 20 years ago. “We each brought different kinds of expertise. I’m the poultry expert, but we had people who had expertise in swine, cattle and other species.”
The group grew in number as time went on. The Scientific Committee now boasts more than 40 experts in animal science and welfare.
But in the beginning, the group was only a handful of animal scientists and veterinarians. And they were all women. Joy remembered that fact distinctly.
“The field of animal welfare was pretty women-dominated,” she said. “There were just a lot more women working in the area, so that was probably part of it.”
The way Adele remembered it, as she reflected during the organization’s 20th anniversary, the group was all women because only women replied to her call to create a new certification program.
“I would believe that,” Joy said with a laugh. “Women are very service-minded.”
The animal welfare movement
Joy describes Adele as an old friend, whom she met while she was a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park. Adele was a lobbyist for American Humane, pushing for more animal welfare regulations on Capitol Hill, and Joy was an advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Adele was frustrated by the lack of progress in Congress. She approached Joy and others for help with a different approach — developing a voluntary program that would encourage American shoppers to choose better animal care practices with the weight of their spending power.
“It was very, very visionary,” Joy said. “We didn’t have anything like that in the United States at the time.”
Joy herself was a trailblazer in her own right, claiming some of the first animal welfare research positions in the United States.
In her decades of research, she’s authored 160 publications on animal behavior and welfare and edited a half a dozen textbooks on the topic.
She got an early jump into the career, pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Sussex right after earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from San Francisco State University. As she began her studies in the United Kingdom, she knew she was interested in studying bird behavior.
It just so happened that the first bird she ended up studying was a chicken.
At the time, there was a growing interest in farm animal welfare in England. Joy found herself at the forefront of research in understanding the feelings and behaviors of animals.
“I got really interested in applying my knowledge of animal behavior toward improving the lives of animals,” she said.
After earning her Ph.D. in ethology (animal behavior) and neurobiology, Joy got what she describes as a series of “lucky” breaks. The first was claiming a postdoc research position at Cornell University, one of the first animal welfare research positions in the United States.
The second was claiming the nation’s first professorship in animal welfare. Joy served as a professor in poultry welfare at the University of Maryland College Park for 10 years before accepting a position at UC Davis, where she stayed for the rest of her career.
What does “humane” mean?
Joy experienced her first commercial poultry farm during a research project at Cornell University. The experimental study centered on researching different kinds of housing systems for laying hens, exploring cages versus pens, which allowed the chickens more freedom of movement.
Up to that point, Joy’s farming experience was limited to occasional visits to her uncle’s small family farm in Iowa. Her uncle had a few chickens, some pigs and a few cattle, and Joy remembered how she loved interacting with the animals.
A commercial chicken farm was a different experience.
“Because of the enormous size, it’s a bit of a shock to see so many animals kept together in one space,” Joy said.
To this day, the United States doesn’t provide federal regulation for how animals are treated on any farm — not for commercial operations nor the smaller farms like the one Joy’s uncle oversaw. That’s what made Adele’s idea so visionary.
“To have an independent third-party body coming out looking at farmers’ operations to see how the animals are treated was a very new concept,” Joy said.
That continues to be a strength in the Certified Humane® program, Joy said. As a teacher at University of California Davis, Joy regularly taught two classes: Animal Welfare and Ethics of Animal Use. In both, she taught her students how scientific research informed the basis for animal care standards used by programs like Certified Humane®.
But Joy also taught them to explore and discuss the ethics of raising farm animals.
“People in our society have very different views about what words like ‘humane’ mean. There’s no set definition for that term,” Joy said.
That’s why it’s important that Certified Humane®’s Farm Animal Standards are transparent, defining exactly how farm animals under the program are treated. That allows shoppers to make an informed decision in the grocery aisle based on their own ethics.
Bravery during a “sensitive” time
Creating the basis for new standards in the United States started by exploring farms in the United Kingdom. Joy was a full-time professor at UC Davis when she traveled with Adele and a small group of women scientists to learn from the Freedom Foods program, developed by Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).
“We toured farms in the United Kingdom, seeing types of commercial farms,” Joy said.
Many of the animal welfare practices they saw in action on those larger farms could only be found on small family farms in the United States. It was important for the group to confirm the scientific basis for and feasibility of applying each standard before including it in the new program.
The Freedom Foods program became the group’s template. Still, it took time and quite a few meetings to develop standards for the U.S. market. It was important for the group to confirm the scientific basis for each standard before adopting it into the new program.
The new program operated for three years under American Humane Association, with Brenda Coe, Ph.D., acting as its director of animal science programs. When Adele parted ways with American Humane to launch a nonprofit focused on farm animal welfare, Joy supported her, joining the Scientific Committee for the new organization.
In May 2003, Adele officially launched Humane Farm Animal Care, the nonprofit that still oversees the Certified Humane® program.
Joy was the only member of the Scientific Committee who attended the media announcement.
“I do remember that. There was a lot of — shall we say — sensitivity about this program being launched,” Joy said. “People didn’t really understand what it was and how it was going to function and what the implications of it were. So there was nervousness.”
“The industry has changed since those early years. These days, farmers and ranchers are more open to auditing programs and third-party standards in general,” Joy said. Some industries even have their own programs, proving the need for certifications that shoppers can trust.
Certified Humane’s standards are designed to be living documents, Joy explained. The role of the Scientific Committee is to update the standards as new research changes the scientific consensus on best practices for healthy, thriving farm animals.
The behavior of dogs and elephants
Joy retired from the Scientific Committee in 2023 — several years after retiring as a full-time professor at UC Davis. In retirement, she traveled and explored the wider world of animal behavior, looking for polar bears in the Arctic tundra and watching wolves in Yosemite National Park.
The adventures were fun, but she missed teaching at UC Davis.
“I really missed my involvement with students. I got a little bored after a few years,” Joy said. “So it’s nice to be back teaching.”
Her first class as an emeritus professor was a freshman course, not on chickens or farm animals, but on the behavior of dogs.
“We had a class that nobody was teaching, and I thought that would be fun,” Joy said with a laugh.
Of course, Joy has researched animal behavior off the farm many times before. She’s done studies on the behavior of laboratory animals used in research, like rodents and rabbits. Her last big research project before retiring at UC Davis was two years tracking the health and behavior of every single elephant living in a North American zoo.
“We studied about 300 elephants, looking at how their welfare was affected by the social group that they were in, the size of their enclosure and other factors,” she said.
That’s what keeps animal behavior and animal welfare so interesting to study and explore, she explained.
“You have to understand your species. But the principles of how you apply behavior to understanding welfare are universal across all species,” Joy said.
Category: bios, Blog