The Welfare Quality project developed comprehensive welfare assessment protocols for farm animals. These science-based tools provide standardized welfare evaluation applicable across different farming systems.
Welfare Quality assessment represents the most comprehensive science-based approach to standardized farm animal welfare evaluation developed to date. By prioritizing animal-based outcome measures over input measures, it captures actual welfare states rather than management intentions. A farm with enrichment objects that animals never use scores differently than one where animals actively engage with enrichment. The multi-criteria approach prevents gaming of single indicators - improving one score cannot fully compensate for failures in others. Implementing Welfare Quality protocols across supply chains creates comparable welfare data that enables progress tracking and identifies farms needing improvement.