Legislation concerning laying hen welfare appears to be influenced more by public perceptions than by scientific and commercial evidence. This paper considers public understanding and power over the issue, and how welfare standards are structured. The usual objection to battery cages is that they do not provide enough space, but there seems to be ignorance of the fact that they were developed in order to improve the health of hens. Evidence is presented of more advantages than disadvantages with cage systems, and of the opposite with alternative (non-cage) housing. Why, then, does the public remain more concerned about just one of the Farm Animal Welfare Council's Five Freedoms — to display most normal patterns of behaviour — than about the other four? Arguably, the declared intent to ban battery cages in the EU in 2012 could not have been based justifiably on evidence in the European Commission Scientific Veterinary Committee's Report on the Welfare of Laying Hens. One therefore has to conclude that the decision to ban battery cages was taken for mainly political reasons, reflecting a belief that the majority of public opinion is against cages. Directive 99/74/EC will allow the use of ‘enriched cages’ after 2012, but, for political reasons, Germany intends to ban battery cages in 2007 and enriched cages in 2012. Following a recent public consultation on a possible similar ban on enriched cages in England, it was decided to defer a decision until after Directive 99/74/EC is reviewed in 2005. In one non-EU country, Switzerland, a national referendum led to a ban on battery cages in 1992. At present, there are ambiguities in minimum standards for different housing systems based on Directive 99/74/EC, which can be exploited by egg producers, sometimes at the expense of bird welfare. These concern stocking densities, the provision of claw-shortening devices, litter and perches, and the practice of beak trimming. They raise the question of the extent to which the structuring of welfare standards should represent a compromise between bird welfare, practicalities, public pressure and commercial interests.

Evidence clearly indicates that the nutritional and non-nutritional environment and level of physical activity during the early-life period from preconception through infancy has a lifelong impact on the child’s health. However this message must be communicated effectively to parents and other stakeholders such as grandparents, health professionals, policymakers and the wider community in order for positive change to occur. This systematic review explores how both awareness and understanding of the long-term effects of the early-life environment have been measured in various populations and whether any patterns are evident. Ten articles were retrieved via a search of Embase, Medline and Scopus databases for peer-reviewed studies designed to assess participants’ knowledge of the links between early-life exposures and adult health. Eligible articles spanned a wide range of countries, population groups and research methods. Three common themes were identified using thematic analysis: 1. a tendency for researchers to conflate participant understanding of the issue (the WHY) with a knowledge of key phrases and nutrition guidelines (the WHAT); 2. bias in both researchers and participants towards short-term thinking due to difficulty conceptualising long-term risk; and 3. challenges in comprehending the complexity of the evidence resulting in oversimplification and the overemphasis of maternal factors. Taken together these findings underscore the importance of a multi-level, whole-of-society approach to communicating the evidence, with the goal of influencing policy decisions as well as building a foundation of community support for parents and prospective parents to create a healthy early-life environment for the long-term wellbeing of all.

The aim of this article is to develop an understanding-based argument for an explicitly political specification of the concept of race. It is argued that a specification of race in terms of hierarchical social positions is best equipped to guide causal reasoning about racial inequality in the public sphere. Furthermore, the article provides evidence that biological and cultural specifications of race mislead public reasoning by encouraging confusions between correlates and causes of racial inequality. The article concludes with a more general case for incorporating empirical evidence about public reasoning into philosophical debates about competing specifications of the concept of race.