Review of the assessment of animal welfare with special emphasis on the 'Welfare Quality® animal welfare assessment protocol for growing pigs'

摘要

This paper discusses the arising need for an objective, but feasible,reliable and valid method for assessing animal welfare on farms. Animalwelfare has become especially important since the industrialisation ofanimal housing after the Second World War and as public awareness andconcern has increased. Simultaneously, alienation of the public fromagriculture has taken place, as the population has moved increasingly fromrural areas to towns. This has led to a very emotional discussion concerningthe welfare of farmed animals, and thus a need for not only a cleardefinition but also a way of objectively measuring it has arisen. It isprobably best defined as a total of the different conceptions health,natural behaviour and positive affective state. In the last few years,different methods for an objective assessment have been developed; however,all of them still face great challenges in their practical implementationand acceptance. The most promising method is probably the WelfareQuality (WQ) approach, especially as it concentrates onanimal-based parameters. The development of the WQ protocols emphasised not only the differentconceptions of animal welfare but also especially the feasibility,reliability and validity of the parameters to be included. One of the mainchallenges of these protocols remains, however, the final aggregation of theresults to a welfare score. Furthermore, a thorough cost–benefit analysishas not been carried out so far. Even more importantly, only a few studieshave addressed the general reliability and validity of the completeprotocols, and those studies that have addressed these issues have alsorevealed challenges concerning the interobserver and test–retest reliabilityof some of the included parameters. As an example, this is discussed indetail for the "Welfare Quality animal welfare assessmentprotocol for growing pigs". In conclusion, the WQ approach can be seen as promising, but it has alsorevealed that there are still a considerable number of challenges that needto be addressed in further studies on the WQprotocols in order to achieve constant improvement. These challenges shouldbe borne in mind in the application of these protocols, which should not besimply referred to as a gold standard.