Abstract
Simple SummaryThe digital revolution opens possibilities to use multiple sensors, a data infrastructure and data analytics to monitor animals or their environment 24/7. Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) offers significant opportunities for a holistic, evidence-based approach to the monitoring and surveillance of farmed animal welfare. To date, the emphasis of PLF has been on animal health and productivity. If PLF develops further along these lines, there is a risk that animal health and productivity define welfare. A combined multi-actor approach that brings together industry, scientists, food chain actors, policy-makers and NGOs is needed to develop and use the promise of PLF for the creative and effective improvement of farmed animal welfare, not only taking into account their physical welfare but also their mental one.Although there now exists a wide range of policies, instruments and regulations, in Europe and increasingly beyond, to improve and safeguard the welfare of farmed animals, there remain persistent and significant welfare issues in virtually all types of animal production systems ranging from high prevalence of lameness to limited possibilities to express natural behaviours. Protocols and indicators, such as those provided by Welfare Quality, mean that animal welfare can nowadays be regularly measured and surveyed at the farm level. However, the digital revolution in agriculture opens possibilities to quantify animal welfare using multiple sensors and data analytics. This allows daily monitoring of animal welfare at the group and individual animal level, for example, by measuring changes in behaviour patterns or physiological parameters. The present paper explores the potential for developing innovations in digital technologies to improve the management of animal welfare at the farm, during transport or at slaughter. We conclude that the innovations in Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) offer significant opportunities for a more holistic, evidence-based approach to the monitoring and surveillance of farmed animal welfare. To date, the emphasis in much PLF technologies has been on animal health and productivity. This paper argues that this emphasis should not come to define welfare. What is now needed is a coming together of industry, scientists, food chain actors, policy-makers and NGOs to develop and use the promise of PLF for the creative and effective improvement of farmed animal welfare.
Highlights
Modern livestock farming has long been predicated upon ever-increasing levels of mechanisation.As herd and flock sizes increase and production methods intensify and specialize, so the technologies of automated identification, feeding, cleaning and slaughter have greatly multiplied allowing economies of scale to retain or expand food chain profitability
We argue that Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) technologies have a significant potential to support the management of animal welfare through radically new forms and mechanisms of observation
We examine how PLF technologies and broader developments in information and communication technologies might improve the observation, monitoring and assessment of farmed animal welfare, in those areas and systems where generic welfare problems persist
Summary
Modern livestock farming has long been predicated upon ever-increasing levels of mechanisation. Current European Union and national welfare rules charge farmers and stock-persons with the responsibility to inspect animals at regular intervals (usually, at least once a day) to verify their wellbeing [14], see for example, UK Government 2000; EU Council Directive 2008/119/EC [15] Good welfare, it would seem, is in large part, dependent upon good observation. As an increasing number of observers are pointing out, the growth of PLF technologies on farms raises new challenges for data management, distribution and ownership as well as recasting the role of the farmer or stock-person both with respect to the animals under their charge and to the valuable and sensitive data that increasingly represent them [17,18,19]. We consider how PLF might enhance our understanding of welfare, and the means to assess it
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