Commercial scale research and assessment of poultry welfare

Abstract

1. Commercial level research on poultry welfare is increasingly important because of the insight it gives into what improves welfare in the context of other important drivers such as human health, environmental impact and cost. 2. There are, however, a number of problems with conducting commercial level research - such as conflicts over aims, financial compensation and legal issues - that need to be addressed if the gains from commercial research are to be optimized. Cooperation between all parties and mutual understanding of the different priorities that may exist between industry and academia are essential. 3. Three important developments for the future are: the setting up of a 'data bank', the application of new statistical methods for analyzing data and new technology for assessing welfare automatically.

Animal welfare research is fascinating, ethical, and useful—but how can it be more rigorous?

“…Solutions to this could include "introducing systematic variation (heterogenization) of relevant variables (for example species/strains of animals, housing conditions, tests)" [1]. Dawkins [5] takes this further, arguing that, at least for poultry, controlled laboratory situations have limited value. "Working directly with the poultry industry on commercial farms … shows what works in practice, out there in the real world": it is critically important because "what is true of 50 birds in a small pen is not necessarily true of 50,000 birds in a large poultry house".…”

Understanding the relative risks of zoonosis emergence under contrasting approaches to meeting livestock product demand

“…In addition, this trend is not universal: some low-yield systems such as ‘extensive’ ruminant ranches have very large herd sizes, and some high-yield farms keep animals in small groups designed to minimize disease transmission. ‘Intensive’ systems and ‘factory farms’, which are typically high-yield, have been linked with relatively poor livestock health and welfare [72], but the limited evidence for this comes largely from small-scale studies of potentially unrepresentative systems [73] in part due to the challenges of conducting research in commercial farms [74]. Indoor farms are often associated with high stocking densities and relatively poorer health and welfare standards, including increased aggression, stress and injury [75,76], though ‘extensive’ (typically low-yield) systems are associated with different welfare problems [77,78] including increased neonatal mortality, parasitic burdens, thermal stress, predation, hunger and thirst [48,79].…”

Assessment of Broiler Chicken Welfare in Southern Brazil

“…Commercial scale assessment and research on broiler chicken welfare are important tools to provide information about real rearing conditions, and they can help producers to make evidenced-based decisions and to anticipate their impacts (Dawkins, 2012). Welfare assessment has also been an important tool to develop scientific-based recommendations (OIE, 2014) and there is a perspective to include animal-based indicators to support animal welfare regulation in EU (EC, 2012).…”