Broiler welfare trade-off: A semi-quantitative welfare assessment for optimised welfare improvement based on an expert survey.

In order to support decision making on how to most effectively improve broiler welfare an innovative expert survey was conducted based on principles derived from semantic modelling. Twenty-seven experts, mainly broiler welfare scientists (n = 20; and 7 veterinarians), responded (response rate 38%) by giving welfare scores (GWS, scale 0-10) to 14 benchmarking housing systems (HSs), and explaining these overall scores by selecting, weighing and scoring main welfare parameters, including both input and output measures. Data exploration followed by REML (Linear Mixed Model) and ALM (Automatic Linear Modelling) analyses revealed 6 clusters of HSs, sorted from high to low welfare, i.

Assessing cattle welfare at slaughter - Why is it important and what challenges are faced?

The welfare of animals in the meat industry, especially at the time of slaughter, has become an area of increasing public scrutiny and has prompted research on its assessment, and enhancement. Fundamental factors such as the effects of transport, reactions of the animals to novel environments and underlying commercial pressures which impose 'speed' and 'robustness of action' in the way animals are handled, can pose a challenge when establishing a valid, reliable and feasible welfare assessment protocol for use at slaughter. The purpose of this review is to assess published work on animal welfare at slaughter, with a focus on the current methods used to assess cattle welfare in the slaughterhouse, which are outlined in the scientific and trade literature, and how these relate to the interaction between the environment, the animal, and slaughterhouse personnel.

Sound analysis to model weight of broiler chickens.

The pattern of body weight gain during the commercial growing of broiler chickens is important to understand growth and feed conversion ratio of each flock.The application of sound analysis techniques has been widely studied to measure and analyze the amplitude and frequency of animal sounds. Previous studies have shown a significant correlation (P ≤ 0.