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Assessing animal welfare in sow herds using data on meat inspection, medication and mortality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2014

K. M. Knage-Rasmussen ,
T. Rousing ,
J. T. Sørensen  and
H. Houe
K. M. Knage-Rasmussen
Affiliation:
Department of Animal Science, Aarhus University, Blichers Allé 20, PO Box 50 DK-Tjele, Denmark
T. Rousing
Affiliation:
Department of Animal Science, Aarhus University, Blichers Allé 20, PO Box 50 DK-Tjele, Denmark
J. T. Sørensen*
Affiliation:
Department of Animal Science, Aarhus University, Blichers Allé 20, PO Box 50 DK-Tjele, Denmark
H. Houe
Affiliation:
Department of Large Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Grønnegårdsvej 8, 1870 Frederiksberg C, Denmark
*
†E-mail: Jantind.sorensen@agrsci.dk
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Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the development of a cost-effective alternative to expensive on-farm animal-based welfare assessment systems. The objective of the study was to design an animal welfare index based on central database information (DBWI), and to validate it against an animal welfare index based on-farm animal-based measurements (AWI). Data on 63 Danish sow herds with herd-sizes of 80 to 2500 sows and an average herd size of 501 were collected from three central databases containing: Meat inspection data collected at animal level in the abattoir, mortality data at herd level from the rendering plants of DAKA, and medicine records at both herd and animal group level (sow with piglets, weaners or finishers) from the central database Vetstat. Selected measurements taken from these central databases were used to construct the DBWI. The relative welfare impacts of both individual database measurements and the databases overall were assigned in consultation with a panel consisting of 12 experts. The experts were drawn from production advisory activities, animal science and in one case an animal welfare organization. The expert panel weighted each measurement on a scale from 1 (not-important) to 5 (very important). The experts also gave opinions on the relative weightings of measurements for each of the three databases by stating a relative weight of each database in the DBWI. On the basis of this, the aggregated DBWI was normalized. The aggregation of AWI was based on weighted summary of herd prevalence’s of 20 clinical and behavioural measurements originating from a 1 day data collection. AWI did not show linear dependency of DBWI. This suggests that DBWI is not suited to replace an animal welfare index using on-farm animal-based measurements.

Keywords

welfare indexanimal welfarecentral databaseanimal basedsow
Type
Research Article
Information
animal , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , March 2015 , pp. 509 - 515
Copyright
© The Animal Consortium 2014 

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