Welfare
Real Welfare
Real Welfare is an industry-led project funded by BPEX to help pig producers demonstrate pig welfare and boost productivity, using ‘welfare outcomes’ or ‘animal-based’ measures.
The process has begun to make Real Welfare part of the Red Tractor farm assurance scheme from April 2013. An industry consultation will take place in autumn 2012.
Objective, science-based welfare
- Based on what the pig itself shows us rather than its environment
Improved productivity
- Provides a trigger for discussion on farm with familiar vet
- Helps identify actions to improve pig performance for each specific farm
Compare with the rest of the industry
- Standard methods and definitions, comparable between all husbandry systems
- Anonymous centralised database enables benchmarking
Demonstrate pig welfare standards
- Real Welfare supports marketing of Red Tractor pork to consumers, providing robust scientific evidence with which to demonstrate pig welfare.
Real Welfare confirms the pig industry’s commitment to continually review and further improve our welfare standards.
The Real Welfare project is also working closely with the AssureWel project (RSPCA, University of Bristol and the Soil Association) which is being introduced to the RSPCA Freedom Food and Soil Association assurance schemes
The measures
The ‘core’ measures being piloted are exactly the same for Real Welfare and AssureWel pig welfare assessments:
| Finishers | Sows |
| Tail lesions | Shoulder lesions |
| Body marks | Vulva lesions |
| Lameness | Body marks |
| Enrichment use | Lameness |
| In need of hospital pen | Enrichment use |
| Thin sows | |
| In need of hospital pen |
- Click here for more details of the project and the Real Welfare measures
- Click here to download Real Welfare Project leaflet
- Click here for red tractor changes
