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Information System for Agriculture and Food Research

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Animal welfare monitoring in organic agriculture – improving animal welfare and making it transparent (Tierwohl in der ökologischen Landwirtschaft)

Project


Project code: 2822OE119
Contract period: 01.07.2023 - 30.06.2026
Budget: 451,166 Euro
Purpose of research: Applied research
Keywords: training, poultry, indicators, cattle, pigs, animal husbandry, organic farming

Aim of the project is to further develop a reliable, transparent and feasible concept for animal welfare inspections of organic farms within organic audits. This will mainly be based on animal-based indicators that were found to be valid in previous scientific studies, in animal welfare inspection concepts already used by various organic auditing bodies and organic associations, or for similar welfare assessment purposes. These are to be reviewed and, if necessary, further developed regarding validity, reliability and feasibility. Major challenges are the great diversity of farms due to regional and structural differences, as well as the time and costs required for training auditors and implementing the animal welfare audits on farms. Based on existing systems and in coordination with the German organic sector, the methodology for risk-oriented audits will be developed in a participatory approach, which incorporates existing farm data as well as animal-based data collected by the farmers themselves. The latter can additionally be used by the farms for the animal welfare self-assessment required by the German Animal Welfare Act. The aim of the animal welfare audit within organic audits is to identify farms with marked animal welfare problems, to initiate an improvement of animal welfare on these farms and, if necessary in case of failure to improve a deficient initial situation, to derive measures and sanctions to be implemented. Online and on-farm training concepts will be further developed for managing the competence of new and experienced auditors.

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