Towards a Positive Welfare Protocol for Cattle: A Critical Review of Indicators and Suggestion of How We Might Proceed

Abstract

Current animal welfare protocols focus on demonstrating the absence (or at least low levels) of indicators of poor welfare, potentially creating a mismatch between what is expected by society (an assurance of good animal welfare) and what is actually being delivered (an assurance of the absence of welfare problems). This paper explores how far we have come, and what work still needs to be done, if we are to develop a protocol for use on commercial dairy farms where the aim is to demonstrate the presence of positive welfare. Following conceptual considerations around a perceived “ideal” protocol, we propose that a future protocol should be constructed (i) of animal-based measures, (ii) of indicators of affective state, and (iii) be structured according to indicators of short-term emotion, medium-term moods and long-term cumulative assessment of negative and positive experiences of an animal's life until now (in contrast to the current focus on indicators that represent different domains/criteria of welfare). These three conditions imposed the overall structure within which we selected our indicators. The paper includes a critical review of the literature on potential indicators of positive affective states in cattle. Based on evidence about the validity and reliability of the different indicators, we select ear position, play, allogrooming, brush use and QBA as candidate indicators that we suggest could form a prototype positive welfare protocol. We emphasise that this prototype protocol has not been tested in practice and so it is perhaps not the protocol itself that is the main outcome of this paper, but the process of trying to develop it. In a final section of this paper, we reflect on some of the lessons learnt from this exercise and speculate on future perspectives. For example, while we consider we have moved towards a prototype positive welfare protocol for short-term affective states, future research energy should be directed towards valid indicators for the medium and long-term.

Competence to thrive: resilience as an indicator of positive health and positive welfare in animals

“…There is increasing emphasis in studies of animal welfare of the need to not only minimise harms but to also enable the animal to achieve positive welfare outcomes The nature of positive welfare and methods for its assessment are topics under rapid advancement (reviewed by Yeates and Main 2008;Mellor 2015Mellor , 2016Lawrence et al 2019;Mattiello et al 2019;Rault et al 2020;Keeling et al 2021). Lawrence et al (2019) suggested that the concept of positive welfare includes (1) positive affective states, (2) engagement with the environment in a manner that provides positive affective experiences, (3) quality of Fig.…”

“…3). Thus, dynamic indicators of resilience, and the eudaimonic state inferred from the indicators, represent a higher-order level of welfare assessment than domainspecific indicators of hedonic positive welfare currently under development, for example, as described for ruminants by Mattiello et al (2019) and Keeling et al (2021).…”

Positive Animal Welfare: Bridging the Gap or Raising Inequalities Worldwide?

“…to allow its assessment in practice (Boissy et al, 2007;Yeates and Main, 2008;Keeling et al, 2021). While there has been a lot of research on practices or situations that induce animal suffering (Dawkins, 2008), the way positive experiences can buffer or alleviate negative welfare experiences and improve the resulting welfare state of an animal remains scientifically poorly understood (Yeates and Main, 2008;Fife-Cook and Franks, 2019;Lawrence et al, 2019;Rault et al, 2020).…”

Advancing a “Good Life” for Farm Animals: Development of Resource Tier Frameworks for On-Farm Assessment of Positive Welfare for Beef Cattle, Broiler Chicken and Pigs

“…However, QBA has not been validated as a welfare measure in all farm species, and a recent study with laying hens found no associations between QBA scores and feather cover, fearfulness or mortality [ 12 ], which are well-validated measures of hen welfare [ 13 ]. Likewise, the animal-based indicators of ear position, play, allogrooming, brush use and QBA have been proposed as indicators in a prototype positive welfare assessment protocol for cattle, but this protocol has not been tested in practice and is “very far from a fully validated positive welfare protocol in an ideal world” [ 14 ].…”