Assessment of animal welfare on British pig farms
R-and- D » R-and- D » Assessment_ Animal_ Welfare »
Research partners: Royal Veterinary College
Industry partners: British pig producers
Sponsors: BPEX
Project duration: 2006 – 2009
Modern British pig farming requires tight product specifications to be met product specifications to be met profitably while adverse environmental impacts are minimised and animal health and welfare are promoted, all in a way that the consumer will accept and/or demand.
The purpose of this study was to assess, by use of visiting veterinary students, the welfare status of pigs on farms. The education and training of the two cohorts of 511 veterinary students has been reported previously and published in the Journal for Veterinary Medical Education. This has now been incorporated into the undergraduate veterinary curriculum and is being taught to the 4th cohort.
Establishing students as reliable observers was a priority. Inter-observer reliability studies have established good correlation between acceptable kappa scores (=/> 0.6) and those students achieving a pass score (=/> 60%) at the Virtual Assessment (VA) component of the teaching module for Individual Animal Assessment scores indicating a parity with industry assessors (trained by Bristol University). Kappa scores achieved for Group Animal Assessment were not so high, with a higher number of students achieving moderate degrees of agreement (0.4-0.59). This needs further investigation, by parameter, to elucidate parameters that may be less reliably assessed. There is also potential to develop the VA into a continuous professional development (CPD) resource for farmers.
Data from students who passed the VA (80% of cohort) were deemed to be competent observers and included in the epidemiological analysis phase of the project. Of these 358 placements, 195 complete datasets were received containing information on (i) group and individual animal assessment, (ii) resource provision, and (iii) heard and health factors.
Analysis of data using epidemiological techniques, including analysis of pig farm population included in study as subset of national herd to establish national relevancy, continues. Key outputs are that as part of veterinary input to pig farms (and possibly assurance) producers will be informed (through objective measurements) of any present threat to welfare and production performance. This project dovetails neatly with the BPEX Welfare Outcomes project with the added bonus that graduates of the RVC would be well-placed to participate in the project, having developed welfare assessment skills as part of their veterinary education.
Page last updated 08 June 2010