Environmental Quality and Compliance with Animal Welfare Legislation at Swedish Cattle and Sheep Farms

Jan Hultgren,Matthew Hiron,Linda J Keeling,Anders Glimskär,Eddie A M Bokkers

doi:10.3390/su14031095

Jan Hultgren, Matthew Hiron + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031095

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Abstract

Conflicts between different goals can obstruct progress in sustainability, but interests may also coincide. We evaluated relationships between environmental quality and animal welfare on Swedish farms with grazing livestock, using publicly available databases. Data were collected from 8700 official animal welfare inspections on 5808 cattle farms and 2823 inspections on 2280 sheep farms in 2012–2017. Compliance with three animal-based checkpoints was modeled using logistic regression, including a random farm effect to account for repeated inspections. Compliance was regressed on semi-natural grassland area, participation in the National Meadow and Pasture Inventory, Agri-Environmental Scheme (AES) grassland payments, presence of indicator plant species, and the presence of Natura 2000 habitats. Cattle farms complied more often if they received AES payments for grasslands of special values compared with if they did not apply for them (OR = 1.55–1.65; p ≤ 0.0001) and there was a similar tendency for cattle farms that applied for but were denied such payments (OR = 1.29; p = 0.074). There was also a strong tendency for Natura 2000 habitats on cattle farms to be associated with higher compliance (OR = 1.36; p = 0.059). These results suggest a direct or indirect causal effect of biodiversity on cattle welfare. The same associations could not be shown in sheep.

Highlights

Discourse on environmental, social, and economic sustainability is widespread across the public and private sectors and at different levels of society, both regionally and globally.Concerns arise about the impact of agriculture on, for example, biodiversity, public health, and animal welfare [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Sheep farms were characterized by higher compliance, smaller semi-natural grassland areas, but larger semi-natural grassland percentages, larger TUVA
Judging by the distribution of inspections across categories of AgriEnvironmental Scheme (AES) values, indicator plant species, and Natura 2000 habitats, grassland quality and biodiversity were similar on cattle and sheep farms

Summary

Introduction

Concerns arise about the impact of agriculture on, for example, biodiversity, public health, and animal welfare [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Regulatory requirements, societal desires, and market demands change and increasingly require that farms are monitored for the impacts of their production on issues such as food safety, environmental values, and animal welfare [8]. The widely used tool Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture (SAFA) [11], includes the environmental dimension, and sustainability performance for economy, social (including animal welfare), and governance dimensions. Comparative studies on environmental performance in egg and dairy production systems, for example, showed that the systems perform differently for different sustainability indicators [13,14,15,16]

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