Monitoring animal welfare to enable labelling

1
Monitoring animal welfare to enable labelling

• Isabelle VEISSIER Raphaëlle BOTREAU
• INRA, UR1213 Herbivores, France

2
What is animal welfare? (1/2)

• Two major schools for  what is welfare 
• The state of an individual in regards to its
  attempts to cope with its environment (Broom,
  1986)? adaptation is the focus
• The absence of suffering (Dawkins 983)? feelings
  are the focus

3
What is animal welfare? (2/2)

• Consensus on  what is in animal welfare
  multidimensional concept
• e.g. Five freedoms (FAWC 1992)
• Freedom from hunger and thirst
• Freedom from discomfort
• Freedom from pain, injury and disease
• Freedom to express normal behaviour
• Freedom from fear and distress
• Consequences for the assessment of welfare
• There is no unique measure of animal welfare
  Each aspect of welfare needs to be checked
• What is the relative importance of each
  aspect?Can there be compensations between
  aspects???
• For some scientists it is pointless to design an
  overall assessment of welfare we should
  identify welfare problems and propose remedial
  solutions.
• We believe that an overall assessment of animal
  welfare can encourage producers to take up such
  remedial solutions (e.g. by enabling labelling).

4
Monitoring system proposed
5
Building an overall assessment

• 1- Definition of criteria ( independent aspects
  of animal welfare that form an exhaustive but
  minimal checklist)
• 2- Development of measures to check conformity
  to criteria
• 3- Construction of criteria ( arrangement of
  measures)
• 4- Aggregation of criteria to form an overall
  assessment

6
1- Definition of welfare criteria
7
2- Development of welfare measures

• Measures on resources management? guaranty of
  means / quality of the living- difficult to
  integrate new techniques- subject to human
  perception
• Measures on animals health, behaviour ?
  guaranty of results / quality of the life- more
  difficult to apply - closer to animal welfare

Measures on animals are preferred
8
(No Transcript)
9
3- Construction of welfare criteria

• Type of construction according to nature and
  number of measures
• weighted sums,
• lexicographic methods,
• comparison to thresholds
• Parameters defined according to evaluation of
  virtual datasets of measures by experts (
  partners who developed the measures)
• Adjustment of curves to fit expert evaluations

10
3- Construction of welfare criteria

• Type of construction according to nature and
  number of measures
• weighted sums,
• lexicographic methods,
• comparison to thresholds
• Parameters defined according to evaluation of
  virtual datasets of measures by experts (
  partners who developed the measures)
• Adjustment of curves to fit expert evaluations

11
4- Aggregation of welfare criteria

• We need to define
• The reference profiles
• Veto rules
• Criteria weights

Feeding
Behaviour
Health
Housing
Exchanges with potential end-users
12
Conclusion

• SensitivityThe system allows a range of results
  from very poor welfare to top class
• TransparencyIntermediate scores are available
  They can help producers understand their final
  result and encourage them to take efficient
  remedial measures (i.e. likely to affect the
  result)
• FlexibilityParameters may vary according to
  future societal concerns and new scientific
  knowledge

13

• Thank you for your attention