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Animal-based parameters are no panacea for on-farm monitoring of animal welfare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

MBM Bracke
MBM Bracke*
Affiliation:
Animal Sciences Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre, PO Box 65, 8200 AB Lelystad, The Netherlands
*
email: marc.bracke@wur.nl
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Abstract

On-farm monitoring of animal welfare is an important, present-day objective in animal welfare science. Scientists tend to focus exclusively on animal-based parameters, possibly because using environment-based parameters could be begging the question why welfare has been affected and because animal-based parameters would be better indicators of welfare. However, selection of even the best animal-based parameters that have conventionally been used in experiments could have unacceptable consequences. Systems that are generally considered to be poor welfare systems may generate unacceptably high welfare scores. The monitoring systems could fail to match basic intuitions in society and the scientific community. In order to avoid this problem, available knowledge, eg about animal motivation derived from consumer demand studies and knowledge about the natural behaviour of the animals, should be used explicitly in welfare assessment. This requires making welfare inferences from knowledge about the relationships between environment-based and animal-based parameters using standard operating procedures. The on-farm measurement of animal-based parameters may be regarded as the measurement of critical control points, which must be compared and reconciled with predictions based on available scientific knowledge. For this purpose the formalisation of welfare assessment should be developed further.

Keywords

animal welfareassessmentdesign criteriahousingmonitoringperformance criteria
Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 16 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on the Assessment of Animal Welfare at Farm and Group Level , May 2007 , pp. 229 - 231
Copyright
© 2007 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

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