Farm Animals

Farmed Cattle Welfare Metrics and Data

Standardised welfare metrics and data collection enable benchmarking, trend analysis, and evidence-based policy for cattle welfare improvement.

Key Facts

Lameness, mastitis, body condition score, and longevity are the core cattle welfare metrics
Standardised recording allows meaningful comparison between farms and systems
National datasets from welfare monitoring schemes provide population-level welfare insights
Data quality and completeness vary significantly between recording systems
Veterinary herd health plans increasingly incorporate welfare metric monitoring

Welfare Considerations

Cattle welfare improvement requires data - standardised, comparable, and longitudinally collected. The development of national welfare metric databases enables identification of farms and systems that achieve the best welfare outcomes and supports evidence-based policy. Investing in welfare data infrastructure is a prerequisite for systematic welfare improvement.

What You Can Do

Support standardised welfare metric recording in cattle production
Advocate for national welfare metric databases accessible to researchers and policymakers
Choose dairy and beef from farms participating in welfare data collection schemes