A standardised equine-based welfare assessment tool used for six years in low and middle income countries.
Authors: Sommerville Rebecca, Brown Ashleigh F, Upjohn Melissa
Journal: PloS one
Summary
# Editorial Summary: SEBWAT – A Practical Welfare Assessment Framework for Working Equids The Standardised Equine-Based Welfare Assessment Tool (SEBWAT) represents a significant development for equine professionals engaged with working animals in low- and middle-income countries, where approximately 600 million people rely on equids for their livelihoods across agriculture, construction and transport. Sommerville and colleagues present a detailed evaluation of SEBWAT's evolution and deployment by an NGO over six years, documenting how the tool has been refined from its original version to an improved second iteration, with comprehensive methodology for user training and data collection. Across 11 LMICs, the assessment tool has been applied over 71,000 times, generating substantial real-world evidence on working equid welfare that extends beyond academic settings into direct practice. Case studies from Guatemala and Jordan demonstrate SEBWAT's utility for both rapid needs assessments and longitudinal monitoring of welfare improvements, offering practical evidence of how standardised measurements can inform targeted interventions. For farriers, vets, physiotherapists and those advising on working equid management, this framework provides a validated, scalable approach to documenting welfare status and tracking outcomes, though practitioners should consider the tool's identified limitations when implementing it within their own contexts or designing supplementary assessments for specific regional or operational requirements.
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Practical Takeaways
- •A validated, practical welfare assessment tool exists and has proven track record in low-resource settings—valuable for NGOs and practitioners working with working equids globally
- •Standardised welfare measurement enables data-driven decision-making for improving working equid health and productivity at scale
- •Tool methodology and training process are transferable; organisations can adopt and adapt SEBWAT for their own equid populations
Key Findings
- •SEBWAT has been successfully applied over 71,000 times across 11 low-middle-income countries over 6 years of practical implementation
- •Tool was revised from original to second version based on field experience and user feedback
- •Assessment demonstrates feasibility of standardised welfare measurement for working equids in resource-limited settings
- •Case studies from Guatemala and Jordan show utility for both needs assessment and longitudinal welfare monitoring