Farmed Animals

Setting and Using Welfare Benchmarks in Livestock Production

Welfare benchmarks provide farms with targets for improvement and enable comparison against peer and best practice standards.

Key Facts

Welfare benchmarks are set using distribution data from assessed farms to identify realistic improvement targets
Best practice benchmarks reflect achievable performance in top-performing farms
Industry-level benchmarking programs exist in dairy, pig, and poultry sectors
Farms that receive benchmarked feedback improve welfare outcomes faster than those without
Benchmarking requires participation incentives to achieve coverage across production systems

Welfare Considerations

Welfare benchmarking provides farms with comparative context for their welfare performance that motivates and guides improvement. Knowing that a farm is in the bottom quartile for lameness prevalence, for example, provides both a clear target and evidence that improvement is achievable. Well-designed benchmarking programs protect confidentiality while providing actionable comparative data.

What You Can Do

Support welfare benchmarking program development in livestock sectors
Advocate for participation incentives in welfare benchmarking schemes
Raise awareness about benchmarking as a welfare improvement tool
Support research into the effectiveness of benchmarking on welfare outcomes
Encourage farm advisers and vets to use benchmarking data in welfare consultations