A Legal Ban on Dog Meat Production: Political Decision-Making for an Ethical Community.

For over 40 years, the human consumption of dog meat has been a controversial issue in South Korea. While some defend it as cultural tradition, others criticize the act as unethical treatment of dogs. This study examined the public perceptions and opinions driving the legislative efforts to ban dog meat through an online survey of 1000 participants assessing their experiences with dog meat, awareness of related issues, and support for institutional bans.

Attitudes of South Korean consumers toward the prudent use of antimicrobials in livestock animals.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in livestock is a complicated and multi-sectoral risk that threatens public health in the interactions between humans, animals, and environment. Through their increased awareness of AMR issues, consumers can make a significant impact on regulations and strategies to reduce or eliminate the use of antimicrobials use. This study aims to provide evidence-based data for promoting the prudent use of antimicrobials (PUA) in the livestock industry to reduce the risk of AMR and increase animal welfare by identifying consumers' intentions to support PUA practices in livestock farming.

Establishing veterinary graduation competencies and its impact on veterinary medical education in Korea.

Competencies are defined as an observable and assessable set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Graduation competencies, which are more comprehensive, refer to the required abilities of students to perform on-site work immediately after graduation. As graduation competencies set the goal of education, various countries and institutions have introduced them for new veterinary graduates.

Traumatic Stress of Frontline Workers in Culling Livestock Animals in South Korea.

The last decade brought several devastating outbreaks of foot and mouth disease and avian influenza in South Korea, which had been handled through preventive culling, despite the controversy surrounding its efficiency and ethical considerations. Notably, the lack of regulations on culling processes has exposed the workers to extremely harsh working conditions. This study investigates the effect of culling jobs on the mental health of the frontline workers, based on 200 samples collected through a web-based survey conducted on participants with experience of culling tasks.

Stressors Predicting Depression, Anxiety, and Stress in Korean Veterinary Students.

Psychological distress has a negative impact on professional development in health care professions. In this article, we measured the prevalence of students' depression, anxiety, and stress using the DASS-21 questionnaire in 10 veterinary colleges in Korea to investigate the stressors that contribute to these forms of psychological distress. The prevalence of academic and relationship types of stressors were higher than others.

An Analysis of Veterinary Practitioners' Intention to Intervene in Animal Abuse Cases in South Korea.

Due to their professional abilities, veterinarians have a duty to reduce animal abuse. Therefore, it is crucial to understand their attitude and behavior on encountering animal abuse cases. We analyzed the responses from completed questionnaires ( = 593) filled by small and large animal practitioners in South Korea.

Active learning through discussion: ICAP framework for education in health professions.

Background: The ICAP framework based on cognitive science posits four modes of cognitive engagement: Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive. Focusing on the wide applicability of discussion as interactive engagement in medical education, we investigated the effect of discussion when it was preceded by self-study and further investigated the effect of generating questions before discussions.

Methods: This study was conducted in the second semester of 2018 and was participated in by 129 students majoring in health professions, including medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and nursing.

Rabies Outbreaks and Control during the Japanese Colonial Period in Korea.

Rabies became one of the critical zoonoses in the modern urban environment since pet keeping culture became widespread in the Western countries in the 18th century. The sanitary policy against rabies was a forceful tool for the colonial rulers in the 19th century. This study describes the rabies outbreaks in the context of prevention methods, experts' engagement and the public response to the policies based on the statistics, regulations and newspaper articles on rabies in Korea during the Japanese colonial period.

Disentangling the link between supplemental feeding, population density, and the prevalence of pathogens in urban stray cats.

Background: Supplemental feeding of free-roaming animals, including wildlife and feral or stray animals, is well known to have a substantial impact on various aspects of animal ecology including habitat use, activity patterns, and host-pathogen interactions. Among them, an increased population density (PD) of animals receiving supplemental food raises concerns regarding the transmission of pathogens in these host populations. The primary aim of this study was to investigate how supplemental feeding is associated with host PD and prevalence of pathogens with different transmission modes in urban stray cats.

Ensuring reproducibility and ethics in animal experiments reporting in Korea using the ARRIVE guideline.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the reporting quality of animal experiments in Korea using the Animals in Research: Reporting Experiments (ARRIVE) guideline developed in 2010 to overcome the reproducibility problem and to encourage compliance with replacement, refinement and reduction of animals in research (3R's principle). We reviewed 50 papers published by a Korean research group from 2013 to 2016 and scored the conformity with the 20-items ARRIVE guideline. The median conformity score was 39.

Anthropogenic food provisioning and immune phenotype: Association among supplemental food, body condition, and immunological parameters in urban environments.

Direct or indirect supplemental feeding of free-ranging animals occurs worldwide, resulting in significant impacts on population density or altered demographic processes. Another potential impact of increased energy intake from supplemental feeding is altered immunocompetence. As immune system maintenance is energetically costly, there may be trade-offs between immune responses and other energy-demanding physiological processes in individual animals.

Infections by pathogens with different transmission modes in feral cats from urban and rural areas of Korea.

In this study, we examine prevalences of three infectious pathogens with different transmission modes (, hemoplasma, and ) in feral cats from urban and rural habitats. Infection status of the three pathogens in blood samples (n = 117) was determined through molecular or serological diagnostic methods. Overall prevalence of hemoplasma, , and was 47.

Continuing Veterinary Medical Education Needs Assessment of Small Animal Practitioners in South Korea.

This first survey of small animal veterinarians in Korea explores demographic patterns, previous learning experiences, and program preferences for continuing veterinary medical education (CVME). Data were analyzed to identify and describe learning needs and preferences. Respondents' average CVME hours (38.

Anaplasma sp. and hemoplasma infection in leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis euptilurus) from Korea.

This study examined the occurrence of Anaplasma spp. and hemoplasma infection in leopard cats, Prionailurus bengalensis euptilurus, in Korea. Twenty-nine biological samples were tested by molecular analysis.

Evaluation of biochemical and haematological parameters and prevalence of selected pathogens in feral cats from urban and rural habitats in South Korea.

Objectives: In this study, we evaluated the potential association between the habitat types of feral cats and the prevalence of selected infectious pathogens and health status based on a set of blood parameters.

Methods: We live-trapped 72 feral cats from two different habitat types: an urban area (n = 48) and a rural agricultural area (n = 24). We compared blood values and the prevalence of feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), feline leukaemia virus (FeLV) and haemotropic Mycoplasma infection in feral cats from the two contrasting habitats.

Glucocorticoid receptor changes associate with age in the paraventricular nucleus of type II diabetic rat model.

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder that is associated with the dysregulation of a number of systems within the body. In the present study, we investigated glucocorticoid receptor (GR) immunoreactivity and its protein levels in the paraventricular nuclei of 4-, 12-, 20- and 30-week-old Zucker diabetic fatty (fa/fa, ZDF) and in Zucker lean control (fa/+ or +/+, ZLC) rats, because the progressive induction of diabetes is detectable in this model after 7 weeks of age and chronic diabetic conditions are maintained after 12 weeks of age. GR immunoreactivity was detected in parvocellular paraventricular nuclei and this and GR protein levels were exponentially increased according to the ages.

Increasing production in Korean shrimp farms with white-spot syndrome virus PCR-negative brood stock.

White-spot syndrome virus (WSSV) is a devastating, infectious virus affecting shrimp. Although sensitive techniques involving PCR have been developed to assist farmers in screening shrimp (brood stock) for WSSV prior to stocking ponds, such practices have not yet been applied in Korea. Despite the rationality of implementing screening, there has been some doubt as to whether the stocking of WSSV-PCR-negative fry epidemiologically decreases white-spot disease outbreaks.