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Broiler chicken welfare is under increasing scrutiny due to welfare concerns regarding growth rate and stocking density. This farm-based study explored broiler welfare in four conditions representing commercial systems varying in breed and planned maximum stocking density: (1) Breed A, 30 kg/m 2 ; (2) Breed B, 30 kg/m 2 ; (3) Breed B, 34 kg/m 2 ; (4) Breed C, 34 kg/m 2 . Breeds A and B were 'slow-growing' breeds (< 50 g/day), and Breed C was a widely used 'fast-growing' breed. Indicators of negative welfare, behavioural indicators of positive welfare and environmental outcomes were assessed. Clear differences between conditions were detected. Birds in Condition 4 experienced the poorest health (highest mortality and post-mortem inspection rejections, poorest walking ability, most hock burn and pododermatitis) and litter quality. These birds also displayed lower levels of behaviours indicative of positive welfare (enrichment bale occupation, qualitative 'happy/active' scores, play, ground-scratching) than birds in Conditions 1-3. These findings provide farm-based evidence that significant welfare improvement can be achieved by utilising slow-growing breeds. There are suggested welfare benefits of a slightly lower planned maximum stocking density for Breed B and further health benefits of the slowest-growing breed, although these interventions do not offer the same magnitude of welfare improvement as moving away from fast-growing broilers.

In the UK, the pig industry is leading the way in the adoption of welfare outcome measures as part of their farm assurance scheme. The welfare outcome assessment (WOA), known as Real Welfare, is conducted by the farmers' own veterinary surgeon. For the first time, this has allowed the pig industry to evaluate welfare by directly assessing the animal itself and to document the welfare of the UK pig industry as a whole. Farmer perspectives of the addition of a welfare outcome assessment to their farm assurance scheme have yet to be explored. Here, we investigate how the introduction of the Real Welfare protocol has been perceived by the farmers involved, what value it has (if any), whether any practical changes on farm have been a direct consequence of Real Welfare and ultimately whether they consider that the welfare of their pigs has been improved by the introduction of the Real Welfare protocol. Semi-structured interviews with 15 English pig farmers were conducted to explore their perceptions and experiences of the Real Welfare process. Our findings fall into three key areas: the lived experience of Real Welfare, on-farm changes resulting from Real Welfare and suggested improvements to the Real Welfare process as it currently stands. In all the three areas, the value farmers placed on the addition of WOA appeared to reflect their veterinary surgeon's attitude towards the Real Welfare protocol. If the vet was engaged in the process and actively included the farmer, for example through discussion of their findings, the farmers interviewed had a greater appreciation of the benefits of Real Welfare themselves. It is recommended that future similar schemes should work with veterinary surgeons to ensure their understanding and engagement with the process, as well as identifying and promoting how the scheme will practically benefit individual farmers rather than assuming that they will be motivated to engage for the good of the industry alone. Retailers should be encouraged to use Real Welfare as a marketing tool for pig products to enhance the perceived commercial value of this protocol to farmers.

The equine industry in Great Britain has not been subject to the same pressures as the farming industry to engage with welfare assessment, but this may change as concern about equine welfare increases. Stakeholder attitudes toward welfare assessment may impact the implementation of welfare assessment practices. Focus-group discussions regarding welfare assessment were conducted with 6 equine stakeholder groups: leisure horse owners (caregivers; n = 4), grooms (n = 5), veterinary surgeons (n = 3), welfare scientists (n = 4), welfare charity workers (n = 5), and professional riders (n = 4). Three themes emerged from the discussions: (a) Participants predominantly interpreted welfare assessment as a means of identifying and correcting poor welfare in an immediate way; (b) participants believed that horse welfare varied over time; and (c) attributes of the assessor were viewed as an important consideration for equine welfare assessment. The views of equine industry members give insight into the value welfare assessments may have to the industry and how equine welfare assessment approaches can achieve credibility within the industry and increase the positive impact of welfare assessments on equine welfare.

Investigating how those responsible for the care of nonhuman animals understand the concept of animal welfare is important for animal welfare improvement. In-depth interviews with 31 equine stakeholders were used to explore their perceptions and understanding of welfare. The results showed the stakeholders understood the concept of welfare in 4 ways. Firstly, welfare was understood in terms of the provision of resources-for example, food. Secondly, a "horse-centered" understanding of welfare was articulated; this understanding included the horses' mental state and was linked to natural behavior. Thirdly, the word welfare had negative connotations, and for some, good welfare was achieved through avoidance of negative states. Finally, interviewees discussed incidents that occurred in their own familiar contexts but suggested that these were not welfare problems. Evidence indicated that the ways in which equine stakeholders understood the concept of welfare might have been acting as a barrier to the alleviation of some equine welfare problems. There is a need for strategies aimed at improving equine welfare to consider stakeholder constructs of welfare and the ways in which these constructs are generated and acted upon.

Veterinary surgeons are often asked to provide reports to courts describing factual observations and their expert opinion on the presence or absence of unnecessary suffering in animals. This study reviewed 42 expert witness reports in order to describe the approach taken to the assessment of unnecessary suffering. While most reports suitably described factual observations, there was significant variation in the opinions on suffering and the actions of the owner. Severity and duration of potential suffering was commented upon in 26 and 29 reports, respectively. Experts used terms associated with negative mental states and physical states in 28 and 27 reports, respectively. The necessity of suffering was commented upon in 27 reports, with minimal commentary on the actions of the owner. External references supporting the opinion of the expert were only provided in 13 reports. There was evidence of disputes between experts concerning the definition of suffering, the significance of clinical findings and the relevance of different assessment methods. It is suggested that expert witness reports should include a systematic consideration of the animal's mental and physical states, severity of harm, duration of harm and a commentary on the necessity of suffering as defined by legislation., (British Veterinary Association.)

Despite growing concerns about the welfare of horses in Great Britain (GB) there has been little surveillance of the welfare status of the horse population. Consequently we have limited knowledge of the range of welfare problems experienced by horses in GB and the situations in which poor welfare occurs. Thirty-one in-depth interviews were conducted with a cross -section of equine stakeholders, in order to explore their perceptions of the welfare problems faced by horses in GB. Welfare problems relating to health, management and riding and training were identified, including horses being under or over weight, stabling 24 hours a day and the inappropriate use of training aids. The interviewees also discussed broader contexts in which they perceived that welfare was compromised. The most commonly discussed context was where horses are kept in unsuitable environments, for example environments with poor grazing. The racing industry and travellers horses were identified as areas of the industry where horse welfare was particularly vulnerable to compromise. Lack of knowledge and financial constraints were perceived to be the root cause of poor welfare by many interviewees. The findings give insight into the range of welfare problems that may be faced by horses in GB, the contexts in which these may occur and their possible causes. Many of the problems identified by the interviewees have undergone limited scientific investigation pointing to areas where further research is likely to be necessary for welfare improvement. The large number of issues identified suggests that some form of prioritisation may be necessary to target research and resources effectively.

Lameness in dairy cows is an important welfare issue. As part of a welfare assessment, herd level lameness prevalence can be estimated from scoring a sample of animals, where higher levels of accuracy are associated with larger sample sizes. As the financial cost is related to the number of cows sampled, smaller samples are preferred. Sequential sampling schemes have been used for informing decision making in clinical trials. Sequential sampling involves taking samples in stages, where sampling can stop early depending on the estimated lameness prevalence. When welfare assessment is used for a pass/fail decision, a similar approach could be applied to reduce the overall sample size. The sampling schemes proposed here apply the principles of sequential sampling within a diagnostic testing framework. This study develops three sequential sampling schemes of increasing complexity to classify 80 fully assessed UK dairy farms, each with known lameness prevalence. Using the Welfare Quality herd-size-based sampling scheme, the first 'basic' scheme involves two sampling events. At the first sampling event half the Welfare Quality sample size is drawn, and then depending on the outcome, sampling either stops or is continued and the same number of animals is sampled again. In the second 'cautious' scheme, an adaptation is made to ensure that correctly classifying a farm as 'bad' is done with greater certainty. The third scheme is the only scheme to go beyond lameness as a binary measure and investigates the potential for increasing accuracy by incorporating the number of severely lame cows into the decision. The three schemes are evaluated with respect to accuracy and average sample size by running 100 000 simulations for each scheme, and a comparison is made with the fixed size Welfare Quality herd-size-based sampling scheme. All three schemes performed almost as well as the fixed size scheme but with much smaller average sample sizes. For the third scheme, an overall association between lameness prevalence and the proportion of lame cows that were severely lame on a farm was found. However, as this association was found to not be consistent across all farms, the sampling scheme did not prove to be as useful as expected. The preferred scheme was therefore the 'cautious' scheme for which a sampling protocol has also been developed.

The Welfare Quality(®) protocols provide a multidimensional assessment of welfare, which is lengthy, and hence limited in terms of practicality. The aim of this study was to investigate potential 'iceberg indicators' which could reliably predict the overall classification as a means of reducing the length of time for an assessment and so increase the feasibility of the Welfare Quality(®) protocol as a multidimensional assessment of welfare. Full Welfare Quality(®) assessments were carried out on 92 dairy farms in England and Wales. The farms were all classified as Acceptable or Enhanced. Logistic regression models with cross validation were used to compare model fit for the overall classification on farms. 'Absence of prolonged thirst', on its own, was found to correctly classify farms 88% of the time. More generally, the inclusion of more measures in the models was not associated with greater predictive ability for the overall classification. Absence of prolonged thirst could thus, in theory, be considered to be an iceberg indicator for the Welfare Quality(®) protocol, and could reduce the length of time for a farm assessment to 15 min. Previous work has shown that the parameters within the Welfare Quality(®) protocol are important and relevant for welfare assessment. However, it is argued that the credibility of the published aggregation system is compromised by the finding that one resource measure (Absence of prolonged thirst) is a major driver for the overall classification. It is therefore suggested that the prominence of Absence of prolonged thirst in this role may be better understood as an unintended consequence of the published measure aggregation system rather than as reflecting a realistic iceberg indicator.

There is a growing effort worldwide to develop objective indicators for animal welfare assessment, which provide information on an animal's quality of life, are scientifically trustworthy, and can readily be used in practice by professionals. Animals are sentient beings capable of positive and negative emotion, and so these indicators should be sensitive not only to their physical health, but also to their experience of the conditions in which they live. This paper provides an outline of ethological research aimed at developing practical welfare assessment protocols. The first section focuses on the development and validation of welfare indicators generally, in terms of their relevance to animal well-being, their interobserver reliability, and the confidence with which the prevalence of described features can be estimated. Challenges in this work include accounting for the ways in which welfare measures may fluctuate over time, and identifying measures suited to monitoring positive welfare states. The second section focuses more specifically on qualitative welfare indicators, which assess the 'whole animal' and describe the expressive qualities of its demeanour (e.g. anxious, content). Such indicators must be validated in the same way as other health and behaviour indicators, with the added challenge of finding appropriate methods of measurement. The potential contribution of qualitative indicators, however, is to disclose an emotional richness in animals that helps to interpret information provided by other indicators, thus enhancing the validity of welfare assessment protocols. In conclusion, the paper emphasises the importance of integrating such different perspectives, showing that new knowledge of animals and new ways of relating to animals are both needed for the successful development of practical welfare assessment tools.

Consistency of assessment is essential to the farm assurance process. This study evaluated the inter-observer reliability of 31 farm assurance assessors, six veterinarians and four researchers for five pig welfare outcome measures proposed for inclusion into the UK pig farm assurance schemes. These were (1) tail lesions, (2) body lesions, (3) lameness, (4) pigs requiring hospitalisation and (5) oral behaviour. The following inter-observer reliability testing methods against a gold standard Trainer were used: a comparison of farm prevalence and the numbers of affected pigs in each pen identified by observers, Cohen's kappa (κ), Kendall's W, proportional agreement, sensitivity, and specificity. All measures achieved potentially high levels of inter-observer reliability and it was concluded that none should be excluded from farm assurance at this stage. However, across all the measures, 45% of observers did not record an overall farm prevalence 'close' to that of the gold standard Trainer. With the level of training and testing that took place in this study there would be a danger of significant bias occurring in a national assessment scheme. The data collected enabled some comparison of the methods used to assess inter-observer reliability. It is suggested that when the aim is to achieve agreement between observers on the overall farm prevalence the inter-observer reliability testing should focus on the closeness of the overall farm prevalence recorded by observers, but that other types of analysis may be helpful during training., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Fifty-six pig farmers who attended a series of health seminars completed a questionnaire to assess their attitude to the inclusion of some welfare outcome assessments within farm assurance. In answer to open questions, farmers were most commonly proud of the productivity (27.5 per cent) and welfare (23.5 per cent) of the pigs on their farm, and the welfare of pigs in the UK industry as a whole (26.1 per cent). The most common thing that farmers wanted to tell consumers about was the welfare of the pigs (55.8 per cent), followed by their stockmanship qualities, the quality of their pig meat and the safety of their pig meat (all 13.5 per cent). In answer to closed questions, 66 per cent of farmers stated they would be either quite willing or very willing to perform welfare self-assessments as part of farm assurance, and 66 per cent would be quite or very willing to be anonymously benchmarked on the welfare of their pigs.

Objectives: To evaluate a potential screening programme that would raise awareness of welfare consideration of pet dogs visiting a veterinary practice., Methods: The questionnaire asked owners to provide biographical information about their dog, assess the resources they provided their dog (comfort, exercise, diet, mental stimulation and companionship) from the perspective of their dog's wellbeing and choice, score a range of behavioural and medical signs on visual analogue scale, rate how willing they would be to take on the life of their dog on a visual analogue scale and suggest changes that would improve the quality of life of their dog., Results: Twenty-seven owners completed the questionnaire on consecutive days. There was good correlation for all the parameters between the two days (P<0.05). Of the 16 expected correlations to test internal consistency, nine were significant (P<0.05). Twenty-six per cent of owners scored in the top 10 mm of the visual analogue scale for being willing to "take on the life their dog was living". More exercise was the most commonly suggested change to improve quality of life (14 owners)., Clinical Significance: The questionnaire was found to be repeatable, feasible and to have good internal consistency and validity, making it suitable for use in veterinary practice to assess welfare.

One hundred and two pet rabbits were examined and their husbandry, health and welfare were reviewed. The most common breed was the dwarf lop (n = 38). The most common problem was dental disease, which affected 30 rabbits although only six of their owners were aware of the problem, which was significantly associated with feeding a rabbit mix. All the rabbits were housed in ;hutches' at some stage, but 89 had access to the outside and 47 came inside the home at times. Hutches bought at pet shops were significantly smaller than home-made hutches. Forty-five of the rabbits were housed alone; the relationships between rabbits with rabbit companions were described by their owners as ;very friendly' for 84 per cent of them and ;quite friendly' for the rest.

Certification schemes that aim to provide an assurance on animal welfare have been developed in many countries but there is no internationally agreed mechanism for recognising the equivalence of animal welfare schemes. The lack of standardisation is a complication in international trade as the lack of clarity may impede demand for products from animals reared according to specified levels of welfare. An important first step is to define a credible best practice framework for animal welfare certification schemes that could apply in any country. Schemes may aim to provide assurance on minimum levels of welfare or may also aim to promote welfare improvement within their scheme membership. It is proposed here that certification schemes wishing to make animal welfare claims could adopt a scheme level continuous improvement approach, as already used in quality and environmental certification schemes, to promote improvement at a farm level. It is suggested that this can be achieved by using the following four generic principles. Firstly the scheme can operate a management system that co-ordinates scheme activities which actively promote improvement in animal welfare within participating farms. This management system should include the following generic steps: plan (establish the objectives including desired outcomes, scheme requirements and monitoring processes), do (implement scheme inspection systems and support structures), check (measure and monitor the process and results) and improve (take action to improve performance). Secondly the scheme should develop progressive resources and outcomes requirements that comply with relevant legislation, encourage the provision of opportunities valued by the animals, promote farm level continuous improvement in important welfare outcomes and require innovation not to compromise welfare goals. Thirdly the scheme should target its assessment and support resources on important welfare concerns. Activities should include assessment of relevant welfare requirements and outcomes, promoting interest amongst farmers in their management, ensuring technical advice is available and insisting on remedial action for those farmers with consistent poor outcomes. Finally by taking an evidence-based, participatory and transparent approach the scheme should also embrace external scrutiny and involvement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]