·
Animal
welfare assessment
Animal welfare assessment
is a way of investigating whether animals are being properly cared for, and
providing evidence for the current welfare state of animals. Animal welfare
assessment can provide evidence of the welfare state of an animal, group of
animals or a management system, either on a single day and time or repeatedly
overtime. Animal welfare assessment also provides a means of checking progress
in improving animal welfare, for example as a result of changing management practices.
·
The usefulness of Assessing Animal Welfare
There
are many reasons why assessing animal welfare can be a useful tool.
1. The
care of some animals, such as animals in farms and zoos or those used in
research or education may be covered by regulations or legislation at different
levels:
a) National
standards
b) Regional
standards
c) International
standards
2. Failure
to meet standards can lead to sanctions such as an inability to export products
to particular countries or regions.
3. Using
a defined scheme of welfare assessment can allow this monitoring in a way that
allows different facilities to be considered in the same way.
4. Particular
animal welfare standards may be applied by a retailer (for food animals) or
some other accreditation or certification body.
5. Often
membership of these bodies will be voluntary, for example, a zoo may choose to
become a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquaria (WAZA).
6. Some
schemes also can charge a premium price for their products so membership can
have significant financial advantages.
7. Where
this includes animal welfare then the accrediting body or association will want
to ensure that its members do adhere to the same practices and standards that it
has laid out, especially if these are the main attributes, it is promoting.
·
Animal
welfare assessment measures
There
is no ‘Gold Standard’ measure of animal welfare, and it cannot be measured directly.
Instead, we usually make a series of measures, sometimes called indicators,
which allow us to make some judgement about the welfare state of the animal. There
are various types of measures we can take to assess welfare. Each has its
advantages or disadvantages.
Three
types of measures: -
1. Resource-based
measures
2. Management-based
measures
3. Animal-based
measures
1.
Resource-based Measures
Resource-based
measures assess the inputs into a system, in other words, what we provide to
the animal, for good welfare.
Typical resource-based
measures include:
a) Assessing
the presence or absence of things in the environment.
b) Measuring
the size of pens, enclosures, length of feed face.
c) Assessing
the air quality, ventilation, light level and other aspects of the physical
environment.
·
Advantages
of Resource-based Assessment
a. A
housing system may have been carefully defined to take into consideration all
the different welfare needs of the animal.
b. These
type of assessments do not generally require a lot of training for those doing
the assessment.
c. The
measures also have a high level of consistency (i.e. can easily be measured in
the same way in different places, at different times and by different people) and
it can be clear whether the guidelines have been adhered to, or where a facility
complies with the standards.
·
Disadvantages
of Resource-based Assessment
a. Assessing
the inputs into a system do not necessarily tell us how well the animals in
the system is doing.
b. Within
a system, some animals may cope well, and others not cope well at all, and by
just looking at the physical aspects of the system we may miss these details.
c. It
may also be that the system has not considered all aspects of an animal’s welfare
in the guidelines, and by assessing the inputs alone we are not assessing other
domains of welfare.
d. In
general, focusing on the physical structures or inputs to the system does not
always engage with the animal keeper, who may be unable to easily change these,
and does not generally use these measures themselves to assess their animals.
2.
Management-based
measures
Management-based
measures focus on how the animal caretaker looks after the animals within the organization.
These types of actions will ask how and what resolutions are made for animal safety,
how the diverse resources are used, and can also look at registers kept by the executives
of the system. Measures of this type might comprise things like observing at
records of mortalities, morbidities and disease or treatment (where these happen),
evaluating how and when feed is delivered to the animals.
·
Benefits
of management-based measures
a.
The benefits of these kinds of
measures are that they start to ask a bit more about how the system functions,
rather than just describing what the system is as with the resource-based processes.
b.
They can also observe how the organization
works overtime as records can assess over a while instead of just on the day.
·
Disadvantages
of Management-based measures
a.
This assessment is completely reliant
on the existence and correctness of the record-keeping, & whether the
animal attendant or executive is correct in their explanation of what they do
to cope with the system.
b.
Administration
plans also do not essentially explain how the animals manage in the system.
3.
Animal-based Measures
This
type of assessment that is animal-based occasionally referred to as outcome-based
measures. These assessments do not consider the contributions but what is the
actual result for the safety of an animal living inside the system. These
measures can be made on a specific animal, several individuals within the
system or at a group level. Outcome measures contain evaluating the physical ailment
of the animal (fat cover, the existence of injuries, coat hygiene and condition),
the presence of illness states and the behaviour of the animal (e.g. time spent
lying, presence of conventional behaviour, anger etc.).
·
Benefits
of animal-based measures
a.
The benefit of these sorts of assessment
is that they get great earlier to evaluating animal welfare in terms of how
well, the animal is surviving in the system.
b.
This can assimilate evidence about
what assets are delivered to the animal in the system and the determinations
made in the supervision of the system, into measures of what this means in
welfare results.
·
Detriments
of animal-based measures
a.
The drawbacks of this assessment are
that they normally involve a much-improved knowledge and acceptance of the animal that measuring the other sorts of measures.
b.
The person directing the assessment
will need significantly more training to accomplish good consistency than with
resource-based assessment e.g., and the measures may be considered more particular
and open to unfairness.
c.
This can then lead to a larger trouble
in attaining agreement on the welfare state of the animals, within and between organizations
and facilities.
d.
Also, these kinds of measures can
often take lengthier to make and may need animals to be moved from their
housing and to be handled.
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