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Integration of data collected on farms or at slaughter to generate an overall assessment of animal welfare

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Improving farm animal welfare

Abstract

One objective of the WelfareQuality® project was to propose a standardised assessment method that could be used to provide transparent information on farm animal welfare to all relevant stakeholders. As described in earlier chapters, Welfare Quality® therefore built welfare assessment systems for cattle, pigs and poultry incorporating numerous measures based preferably on the animals but also to a lesser extent on resources and management of animal units (farms or slaughter plants). Of course, the substantial amount of data gathered during assessment needs to be meaningfully interpreted in terms of welfare and then integrated to provide an overall evaluation of the animal unit. Therefore, Welfare Quality® designed a scoring model to integrate the data and to translate value judgements into refined and easily understandable information that could serve various purposes and guide the decisions of stakeholders (including consumers) with regard to farm animal welfare.

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Harry Blokhuis Mara Miele Isabelle Veissier Bryan Jones

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Botreau, R. et al. (2013). Integration of data collected on farms or at slaughter to generate an overall assessment of animal welfare. In: Blokhuis, H., Miele, M., Veissier, I., Jones, B. (eds) Improving farm animal welfare. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen. https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-770-7_7

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