Developing a monitoring system

Developing a monitoring scheme to assess animal welfare of pigs, cattle and poultry involves a large collaborative effort. No researcher or research group alone has the breadth of knowledge to assess the welfare of these species on farm, during transport and at slaughter, that is to say the whole production chain, as is the intention in this sub- project. Thus the first step in this part of Welfare Quality has been the consensus building process that started last summer. In work led by researchers from Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Spain and Norway, which culminated in a workshop in Finland in August, basic principles about the monitoring scheme were developed. The principles were approved by the external Advisory Committee in the autumn and research proposals to test the potential measures according to these principles are currently being evaluated. This second step in sub-project 2, the actually testing of the parameters is going to be the most time consuming in the sub project since only measures that prove themselves to be valid, reliable and repeatable can be included in any future scheme. Plus we must also be aware that all measures have to be collected on a relatively short visit to the farm or slaughter house and so also have to be tested for feasibility under commercial conditions. In the autumn another important step in the development of the monitoring scheme started and that is the research to develop ways to combine these measures. While in the feedback to the farmer each measure may be presented separately, in most cases the data will have to be integrated into sensible categories of welfare and maybe even to a single measure of welfare for labelling.

So what has been agreed so far? Well, the main difference between the monitoring scheme that will come out of Welfare Quality and any earlier scheme will be the emphasis on animal-based measures. This means measures that are taken from the animal itself e.g. presence of injuries, how fat or thin the animal is and how fearful, as well as carcass-related measures such as meat quality or broken bones. It is the animal itself that best reflects how it is coping (or coped) with its physical and social environment and so these types of measures that best help us assess welfare. Usually monitoring schemes consist of so-called resource-based measures, such as space allocation, group size, temperature, ammonia levels etc. These are easier to measure, but they reflect risk to welfare and help identify causes of poor welfare, rather than giving us valid information about an animal’s actual welfare state. The final measures to be investigated in this sub-project are the so-called management-based parameters. These acknowledge the importance of the stockperson on animal welfare and include aspects such as record keeping and handling skills. But again they do not tell us whether a particular animal is having a good life just now, although we know that the chances of good animal welfare are higher if stockmanship is good. The first version of our full monitoring scheme will involve more measures than necessary so that the most efficient and reliable combination of animal, resource and management-based measures can be identified for the final version of the scheme. However, it is our intention to include as many animal-based measures as possible.

There are more than 30 researchers involved in this sub-project to ensure that the scheme has a good scientific basis. But for the monitoring scheme to be widely accepted and implemented in practice, it has to satisfy public, industry and political views of animal welfare. Another important part of the work in sub-project 2 therefore has been cross checking that all areas of welfare concern are being appropriately addressed. For this task, collaboration with sub-project 1 has been important. Examples of areas of concern that have been highlighted by different groups of stakeholders are that the animal should: not suffer, be healthy, be physically comfortable, and be able to show natural behaviour. For this reason we have grouped the measures identified as important by the researchers into broader categories to check that for all species each area has several potential welfare measures that can be monitored.

Many individuals have developed their own personal views on what is and what is not important for good animal welfare. The final monitoring scheme needs to address all valid areas of concern, not only those of interest to the scientists developing it. We feel we have made a good start in this first year towards our goal of “Developing robust on-farm welfare monitoring and information systems for selected farm animal species”.

Linda Keeling

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden