Farm Animal Welfare

Pig Welfare Benchmarking Farms Science

Scientific approaches to welfare benchmarking between farms are enabling systematic identification of welfare leaders and areas for improvement.

Key Facts

Welfare Quality protocols provide multi-indicator assessment enabling comparison between herds
Key welfare indicators including tail lesion prevalence and lameness enable benchmarking
Supply chain integration of benchmarking data creates economic incentives for improvement
Welfare assessment at slaughter provides valuable population-level data from large numbers of animals
Digital data collection is making welfare assessment more efficient and frequent

Welfare Considerations

Welfare benchmarking science is transforming the ability to systematically compare welfare performance and identify improvement priorities. Data-driven approaches enable targeted interventions with measured outcomes rather than assumed improvements.

What You Can Do

Support supply chain adoption of welfare benchmarking programmes with transparent reporting
Advocate for slaughter-based welfare monitoring to collect population-level welfare data
Engage with pig welfare research organisations developing and validating benchmarking tools