Welfare benchmarking enables farms to compare their welfare performance against sector averages and best practice, identifying improvement opportunities and rewarding high performers.
Welfare benchmarking creates accountability and improvement incentives that voluntary standards alone cannot achieve. When a farmer can see that their lameness rate is above sector average, the motivation for improvement is direct and concrete. When retailers use benchmarking data to make supply chain decisions — rewarding farms with the best welfare performance — the commercial incentive for improvement aligns with the welfare benefit. Benchmarking programmes work best when they measure outcomes rather than just inputs, when data is reliable and comparable across farms, and when improvement support is available alongside performance data. The combination of benchmarking and support has driven the greatest documented welfare improvements in livestock production.