New focus on your stockmanship

Assurance schemes should be placing much more emphasis on welfare and stockmanship when they make on-farm inspections.

So says the Farm Animal Welfare Council in a major new report on the impact schemes are making. FAWC also wants systems developed to measure animal welfare in order to establish a “gold standard” against which on-farm performance can be measured.

But it also stresses that in order to meet these requirements the quality and experience of assessors employed to do inspections must be improved.

The Report on the Welfare Implications of Farm Assurance Schemes says that the typical approach of assurance schemes at present is input based and attempts to “infer” the welfare status of the animals from the resources and practices that go into it such as quality of the litter, group size and stocking density.

“It is natural that assurance scheme standards tend to major in these areas given that such characteristics or criteria are clear cut and identifiable,” says FAWC.

“Moreover, it is relatively easy to devise an accompanying inspection protocol which is of the ‘tick-box’ variety and can be audited within a relatively short period of time. In many cases such an audit can be conducted without even the need to observe and assess the state of the animals on-farm.”

Assessing welfare of animals is difficult, admits the report. But it should be a basic requirement that the animals themselves are assessed and the protocols in the health and welfare plans should be used to re-enforce these impressions.

Examples of what inspectors should be looking for are:

• the physical state of the animals

• behaviour reflecting good welfare

• animal temperament, flight distance, aggression/bullying

• injurious behaviours like feather pecking

• behaviours reflecting poor welfare, like indications of listlessness

• cleanliness of the animals

• mortality levels and culling percentages

• evidence of pain or injury

As there is an obvious element of judgment associated with these issues the report demands more from inspectors.

“Assessors must be skilled, trained and competent to assess the physical and mental well-being of the animals as well as being able to interpret the outcome of welfare planning and associated records,” it says.

“All assessors should have knowledge and practical experience in the production system as well as carrying out the relevant audit skills.

“In addition, assessors should have the appropriate personality traits to enable them to engage with farmers and stockmen so as to effectively undertake the verification process in relation to animal welfare. There should be a requirement for continued professional development of assessors.”

Among the report’s 30 recommendations are that schemes should refine their standards and inspections to provide a better reflection of animal welfare and to ensure that assessors have the necessary “knowledge, skills and competencies in livestock husbandry as well as audit procedures”.

But, it continues, what is needed is the development of a welfare index which would allow inspectors to make comparisons between farms and give feedback to producers. Much of the current research work on this issue is being co-ordinated under a major EU research programme called “Welfare Quality”. FAWC is awaiting its findings. “The lack of a gold standard,“ says the report, “is a major constraint to the validation of on-farm welfare measures.”

It compares the “checklist” approach of assurance schemes with the inspections carried out by the State Veterinary Service which fall into four categories. These are: full compliance with both legislation and codes; compliance with legislation but not codes; non-compliance with legislation and causing unnecessary pain and unnecessary distress (UPUD) which is an offence.

The reports that the SVS has found instances of UPUD on farms which were farm assured. It says inspectors need more guidance to recognise acceptable and unacceptable welfare.

“The presence of any UPUD should be classified as a major non-compliance with consequent immediate action required or sanctions imposed.”

But FAWC commends the “pioneering” work of the RSPCA working with scientists at Bristol University on assessing the impact of the Freedom Food scheme on welfare outcomes. The Soil Association is also to work with the University on the implementation of a welfare assessment system to support certification.

But the report expresses deep concern about welfare in organic systems because of the restrictions placed on the use of conventional veterinary medicines.

Schemes are no help say farmers

The vast majority of producers in assurance schemes say they have found no benefit to their businesses or animal welfare.

Six out of ten claim they have joined schemes because they had no option, according to research carried out by the Farm Animal Welfare Council. Almost six hundred farmers responded to the FAWC survey, about 20 per cent were poultry keepers. Nine out of ten said that the way they kept their livestock was no different as a result of joining a scheme.

Three quarters of scheme members said they had gained little or no benefit and two thirds said they believed consumers valued assurance schemes “not much or not at all”.

FAWC comments that producers appear to feel that farm assurance is to a large extent something imposed on them by external influences and that it is largely a “paper exercise” with little impact upon the way they farm. There are no strong indications that schemes have changed awareness of animal welfare issues.

“Clearly,” the Council concludes, “the impacts of farm assurance are more evolutionary than revolutionary.”