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Collaborative project: National Animal Welfare Monitoring - subproject 1 (NaTiMon)

Project


Project code: 28N1800008
Contract period: 15.12.2018 - 14.12.2021
Budget: 1,229,334 Euro
Purpose of research: Inventory & Assessment
Keywords: poultry, husbandry techniques, indicators, monitoring, animal health, animal welfare, stable climate, cattle, pigs, stable building

Animal welfare in livestock farming is a controversial topic. At the same time, there is a lack of reliable information on the status-quo of animal welfare. Data on animal-based indicators for all relevant health areas (e.g. lameness, injuries), animal behaviour and emotions, resource-based indicators (e.g. space availability, husbandry methods) and management-based indicators (e.g. animal interventions, feeding, duration of suckling period) are scarce and not systematically col-lected. Data, which could be used to assess aspects of animal welfare, are regularly collected (for example meat inspection, antibiotic consumption, milk recording scheme). Its use however is inhibited, because: data are not collected in a standardised manner, data are available only for certain animal species/types of production, there is no legal basis for the use of the data with respect to animal welfare. The aim of the project is to lay the foundations for a regular, indicator-based report on the status of animal welfare in livestock farming in Germany and its change over time. This animal welfare monitoring will take into account different dimensions of animal welfare in the relevant animal life stages (husbandry, transport, slaughter). Besides important terrestrial farm animals (cattle, pigs, poultry) aquaculture is included. Data are not collected in a standardised manner, data are available only for certain animal species/types of production, there is no legal basis for the use of the data with respect to animal welfare. The aim of the project is to lay the foundations for a regular, indicator-based report on the status of animal welfare in livestock farming in Germany and its change over time. This animal welfare monitoring will take into account different dimensions of animal welfare in the relevant animal life stages (husbandry, transport, slaughter). Besides important terrestrial farm animals (cattle, pigs, poultry) aquaculture is included. The following work packages will be executed within the project: (1) Evaluation of existing information on and science based preselection of indicators, development of a synopsis. (2) Realisation of a stakeholder analysis and a stakeholder management, selection of indicators with the involvement of stakeholders. (3) Methodical preparation of the calculation (existing data) and collection (not yet existing data) of the animal welfare indicators. (4) Field-tests of the suitability of indicators (survey on farms, transport and slaughterhouse) and determination of data-collection costs. (5) Data-processing for the animal welfare monitoring (including the monitoring report) and measurement of the respective costs. (6) Description of three variants of an animal welfare monitoring (from rudimentary to comprehensive) and estimation of costs and informative value as well as publication of a prototype for an animal welfare monitoring report (print and online). (7) Development of policy recommendations for the implementation of a regular animal welfare monitoring. The following events are planned within the framework of the project: project meetings: twice a year, discussions and information exchange with ongoing indicator projects from research and industry (i.e. food commodity indicators of the food retailing sector): two during the project period, a closing event to present the project results

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