Application of the Welfare Quality® assessment system on European beef bull farms

Abstract

Welfare concerns for intensive beef production have often been raised, but on-farm welfare assessment studies are rare. The aim of this study was to apply the Welfare Quality® (WQ) welfare assessment system for fattening cattle on beef bull farms to evaluate the state of welfare at the level of WQ measures and of aggregated scores, as well as overall classification. In addition, the purpose was to evaluate two ways of providing feedback information to the farmers with regard to possible welfare improvements on the farms. The study was conducted in Austria, Germany and Italy on a total of 63 beef bull farms with deep litter or cubicle-housing systems. Assessments were carried out 3 times (1 month and 7 months apart from the initial visit). In every country, farmers were assigned to two treatment groups (feedback from initial visit as written report, F, written feedback plus oral advice, FA) and a control group (C), which did not receive any feedback. At the criterion level, the highest average welfare scores were obtained from ‘Absence of prolonged hunger’ (94/100 points) followed by ‘Absence of pain induced by management procedures’ (88/100) and ‘Comfort around resting’ (77/100). Most welfare concerns related to the criteria ‘Absence of disease’ (40/100), ‘Expression of social behaviour’ (44/100) and ‘Positive emotional state’ (48/100), thus indicating room for improvements. Two-thirds of the farms achieved the ‘Enhanced’ level, about one-third was judged ‘Acceptable’ and only one farm ‘Excellent’. After 6 months of monitoring period, there was no significant welfare improvement in both the treatment groups as compared with the control group. Reasons for the lack of effect may mainly be seen in the short monitoring period and a lack of external incentives. In conclusion, the WQ assessment system revealed areas for improvement, but longer term studies and investigations on alternative ways of transferring outcomes from on-farm welfare assessments to farmers should be carried out in future.

Animal health and welfare planning improves udder health and cleanliness but not leg health in Austrian dairy herds

“…Reasons for good acceptance of health and welfare plans may be seen in the structured, participatory process as well as in the farm-specific aims and interventions (Tremetsberger and Winckler, 2015). In contrast, in one of the few other studies that applied the Welfare Quality assessment protocol (in beef fattening farms), the uptake of measures proposed by the researchers was low, and health and welfare indicators did not change during the 6-mo study period (Kirchner et al, 2014). This might have been due to a more prescriptive advisory approach and the rather short duration of the study.…”

Welfare of cattle kept in intensive silvopastoral systems: A case report

“…Some previous studies, carried out in different scenarios, have used the Welfare Quality protocol to assess welfare of cattle and other farm species (Dalmau et al, 2009;Temple et al, 2011;Kirchner et al, 2014). Nevertheless, to our knowledge, this is the first scientific study reporting in detail the cattle welfare status in different ISPS using this methodology.…”

An Indication of Reliability of the Two-Level Approach of the AWIN Welfare Assessment Protocol for Horses

“…For statistical analysis, the single categories were treated as independent variables in order to enhance comparability to other studies, e.g., Czycholl et al [ 37 ] and Temple et al [ 38 ], who assessed the reliability of the indicators of the Welfare Quality ® animal welfare assessment protocol for growing pigs and chose this approach, too. Other approaches such as summing up the categories of the three-point scale to a single scale of presence, as for example carried out in Kirchner et al [ 39 ] always go along with a loss of information.…”