Validity of modified methods to assess three welfare indices for use in on-farmpig welfare monitoring

摘要

The Australian Pork Industry Quality Assurance Program (APIQ~R) requires producers to be annually audited against a set of standards and performance indicators, but docs not provide them with the opportunity to monitor and (or) benchmark the welfare status of their animals over time. Although the assessment of animal welfare at farm level remains an on-going challenge, the literature demonstrates the opportunity to develop a practical welfare assessment tool, using valid and reliable animal-based welfare indices (Winckler et al. 2003; Knicrim and Winckler 2009). Whilst extensively employed within the literature and more recently within on-farm assessment schemes, the validity of animal-based welfare indices modified from experimental settings for practical use in on-farm welfare monitoring has not been robustly examined. This study aimed to examine, in a commercial setting, the validity and intra- and inter-observer reliability of modified methodologies (M) of three commonly used animal-based pig welfare indices: body condition score (BCS), lameness score (LS) and injury score (IS).