Professor Malcolm Mitchell

Malcolm's background is in human and animal physiology and he has sought to apply this discipline to understanding "stress" in animals particularly livestock in a commercial agricultural setting and how this relates to their welfare status.

His focus, for many years, has been upon environmental stress with specific emphasis upon thermal stress during animal transportation and in commercial production environments. His team have developed a wide range of approaches and techniques for the characterisation of physiological stress responses in a number of species, including pigs, sheep, cattle and poultry.

A major strength of the approach is the incorporation of quantitative indices of physiological stress into predictive, integrative models that allow definition of acceptable ranges and limits for common stressors experienced by animals in everyday production environments and during transportation.