A review of existing scientific literature on welfare assessment of farmed species applied in commercial practice: identification of strengths, weaknesses, and areas for further development.
Authors: de Jong Ingrid C, Ouweltjes Wijbrand, Llonch Pol, Martin Valls Gerard E, Ko Heng-Lun, Spoolder Hans, Strappini Ana C
Journal: Frontiers in veterinary science
Summary
# Editorial Summary: Standardising Welfare Assessment Across Farmed Species Welfare assessment protocols have proliferated across livestock sectors over the past two decades, yet this expansion has created fragmentation rather than coherence—a systematic review of scientific literature on commercial welfare assessment reveals substantial inconsistency in which indicators are measured, how they're measured, and which welfare domains receive emphasis. The researchers examined published protocols across major farmed species, mapping them against European Food Safety Authority definitions of critical welfare consequences and the five recognised welfare domains (nutrition, environment, health, behaviour, mental state), finding that whilst dairy cattle, broilers, pigs and sheep dominate the research landscape, entire categories of farmed species—including fish species beyond salmon, aquatic invertebrates, insects and quails—remain without standardised assessment tools. Although most protocols did incorporate animal-based indicators and addressed all five domains, health measures dominated considerably, and the sheer variety of specific indicators used (with dairy cattle, horses and sheep showing the highest numbers of unique measurements) undermines the ability to generate comparable data between farms or regions. For practitioners implementing welfare assessments in commercial settings, this fragmentation creates practical challenges: a farrier, vet or nutritionist reviewing welfare data from different producers may be comparing entirely different metrics, making benchmarking and genuine progress assessment nearly impossible. The authors call for urgent standardisation of welfare indicators at the species level, particularly for niche or smaller-scale operations, to enable meaningful data collection on genuinely important welfare issues and allow the profession to move beyond descriptive assessment towards genuine, comparable improvement.
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Practical Takeaways
- •Existing welfare assessment protocols vary widely in their indicators and measures—practitioners need standardized, species-specific protocols to enable meaningful comparison and benchmarking of farm welfare across operations
- •Health indicators dominate current protocols; ensure your welfare assessment includes all five domains (nutrition, health, environment, behaviour, mental state) for a complete picture
- •Common indicators extracted across species can guide development of assessment tools for less-studied farmed animals; if assessing novel species, advocate for evidence-based protocol development rather than ad-hoc measures
Key Findings
- •Most welfare assessment protocols focused on dairy cattle, broilers, pigs and sheep, with significant gaps for aquatic species, insects, and other farmed animals
- •Dairy cattle, horses and sheep protocols used the highest number of unique welfare indicators, showing lack of standardization across species
- •All five welfare domains were generally covered by protocols, with health indicators dominating across species
- •Animal-based welfare indicators were most prevalent in scientific protocols, but significant harmonization and standardization of indicators is needed for comparable data collection and benchmarking