Equid Assessment, Research and Scoping (EARS): The Development and Implementation of a New Equid Welfare Assessment and Monitoring Tool

Abstract

The assessment of animal welfare poses numerous challenges, yet an emerging approach is the consolidation of existing knowledge into new frameworks which can offer standardised approaches to welfare assessment across a variety of contexts. Multiple tools exist for measuring the welfare of equids, but such tools have typically been developed for specific contexts. There is no ‘one size fits all’ which means that resulting datasets are generally non-comparable, creating a barrier to knowledge-sharing and collaboration between the many organisations working to improve equid welfare around the globe. To address this, we developed the Equid Assessment, Research and Scoping (EARS) tool, which incorporates pre-existing validated welfare assessment methods alongside new welfare indicators to deliver a larger and more comprehensive series of welfare indicators than currently exists, creating a single resource that can be used to assess equid welfare in any context. We field-trialled three welfare assessment protocols within the EARS tool, and applied these to welfare assessment of equids in a variety of contexts across nineteen countries. The EARS tool proved a useful, versatile and rapid method for collecting welfare assessment data and we collected 7464 welfare assessments in a period of fifteen months. We evaluate the EARS tool and provide ideas for future development.

The Welfare Aggregation and Guidance (WAG) Tool: A New Method to Summarize Global Welfare Assessment Data for Equids

“…The EARS tool, however, includes assessments for animals in a number of different environments, including animals in production farms, working equids, and companion animals [24]; welfare assessments are required to guide resource allocation for NGOs, for which each of the welfare categories are typically considered individually. Specific welfare improvements will be expected from particular interventions, which can also be linked to specific welfare categories.…”

“…Whether or not different welfare categories should compensate for each other draws on the ethical standpoints of utilitarianism and deontology and remains under debate (see Botreau et al [24] for full discussion). To avoid the issue, Botreau et al [31] suggest stopping the aggregation process at criterion (or category) level and thus only allowing compensation between indicators that interact.…”

“…For some categories, however, environment-based measures may indicate the cause of poor welfare or correlate strongly with an animal-based measure [21]. The EARS tool contains both animal and environment-based measures, with the majority measures in the health and behavior categories belonging to the former; measures in the nutrition, living environment, and working conditions categories belonging to the latter [24]. We, therefore, allowed both types of measures, with the selection based on which were most indicative of (or correlated most strongly with) welfare.…”

“…Questions are available in a series of protocols tailored to the requirements of the assessor or project. Details of the development process can be found in Raw et al [24].…”

“…We propose a transparent, single-step method of aggregation that results in separate 'grades' for five welfare categories: (1) health, (2) behavior, (3) working conditions, (4) living environment, and (5) nutrition. These categories were used as a basis for grouping questions in the Equid Assessment Research and Scoping (EARS) tool [24], a questionnaire-based welfare assessment on which the aggregation method is based, and reflect the four physical (functional) domains of the five domains model [25], with the fifth, 'affective experience', incorporated into categories where applicable. The EARS tool incorporates a range of welfare indicators to enable the assessment of equids in any environment, including those in production, working animals, companion or therapy equids, and free-roaming equids.…”