AN industry research project looking at prospects for the development of a Lifetime Animal Wellbeing Index (LAWI) for sheep and cattle has delivered its final report.
Prepared for Meat & Livestock Australia by a team from CSIRO Agriculture and Food, the report points out that the red meat industries are increasingly under pressure to demonstrate and validate commitments to animal welfare and ethical treatment.
However the assessment of livestock wellbeing over the lifetime of an individual animal, and a mechanism to deliver the information to end-users and consumers was both “highly challenging and complex.”
“As a pre-requisite, it is essential to develop a compelling business case for an industry program to describe lifetime animal wellbeing and to define the scope and path to impact, including risk mitigation, delivery mechanisms, underpinning data platforms, and governance,” the report’s authors said.
Objectives
The objective of the research project was to scope-out the design for an approach to describe lifetime animal wellbeing in the beef and sheepmeat industries.
To scope the development of an LAWI index, existing welfare frameworks and stakeholder needs were studied. A global scan of existing frameworks was conducted, an impact pathway was developed, and stakeholder interviews conducted, including an R&D workshop.
A framework for a cost-benefit analysis was established and principles for database requirements and governance have been proposed.
Key findings
The prospective industry Livestock Wellbeing Assurance Program could be established using animal measures routinely collected by industry, but brought together and reported on following the development of key enabling technologies, the project team found.
“Industry familiarity with the measures should promote early adoption, while phased development would enable the optimisation of past and future investments, by utilising measures and systems already in operation but providing scope for enhancement as new and credible measures are validated,” the team said.
Successful delivery would enable both current and bespoke Welfare/Wellbeing Assurance schemes, providing the opportunity to assure a minimum standard but also allow product differentiation when required, the report said.
“But to achieve this in practice would be highly challenging and complex,” it warned.
Benefits to industry
The primary impact of a Livestock Wellbeing Assurance Program would be the improved wellbeing outcomes for animals, with other economic, social and environmental outcomes being secondary flow-on impacts, the report found.
“An approach to objectively describe lifetime animal wellbeing is unlikely to generate a long-term competitive advantage for an individual industry stakeholder, but will underpin the sustainability of the whole red meat supply chain,” it said.
An examination of the current Australian red meat supply landscape, with respect to welfare assurance schemes and stakeholder needs, had provided principles to guide the concept for design and implementation of an LWAP.
While the research recognised knowledge gaps and missing detail, they said these should not prevent initiation and design of the program.
“Indeed, these gaps should become the focus of a supporting research and development plan. The development and implementation of the proposed program should be phased to optimise existing and future investments and increase adoption,” the report said.
Other project work included development of a framework for cost-benefit analysis, and a proposal for database requirements and governance principles.
“Early in the project, it emerged that the initial idea of exploring a Lifetime Animal Wellbeing Index might not meet the diversity in industry stakeholder needs and the scope was opened to alternatives, such as modular approaches that enable early delivery of a minimum viable product,” the final report said.
“The proposed LWAP could be established using animal measures routinely collected by industry, but brought together and reported on following the development of key enabling technologies.”
Industry familiarity with the measures should promote early adoption, while phased development would enable the optimisation of past and future investments, by utilising measures and systems already in operation but providing scope for enhancement as new and credible measures are validated, the research team suggested.
“Such a program would underpin the sustainability of the whole red meat supply chain,” the report said.
A number of key issues for LAWI to address as a foundation for further development were raised in stakeholder interviews and workshop discussions. These included:
- International credibility
- Auditability
- A sense of ownership of the scheme by producers
- Scope for continual improvement
- What LAWI might look like, and
- Issues surrounding the construct and methodology behind a scoring system
Linkages with sustainability
While many of the already known animal welfare schemes have been developed to just address animal welfare, there was also a significant number of schemes that incorporated sustainability and product quality as well, the report said.
“Successful animal production is a holistic enterprise. There is an increasing understanding of the benefits of good animal welfare on the safety and quality of the end product as well as the recognition that moving forward, the impacts of animal production systems on the environment must be considered to ensure sustainability of industries and the planet.
“Pasture-based certification systems such as Pasture for Life, and Animal Welfare Approved strongly promote the holistic farming system where there are linkages between the animal and the environment. Both must be managed under those certifications.”
Additionally, larger international sustainability networks, such as the Global Roundtable for Systainable Beef, included animal welfare components.
The report stressed the need for international credibility for any new whole-of-life animal wellbeing index.
The international dominance of the United Kingdom’s Farm Animal Welfare Council in setting the parameters for welfare assessment through the Five Freedoms Model and its subsequent extension to the Five Domains Model and the Good Life Model created a need for any LAWI to be couched in terms that reference these frameworks, in order to have credibility in the international community, the report authors concluded.
“This does not mean these models should be adopted in-toto or uncritically as the basis for LAWI, but that the criteria underpinning any LAWI need to be parsed in language that can be mapped to these models as a basis for explaining to the international community what LAWI addresses, and why it is valid within both the Australian and international contexts.”
“What we need is not a ‘welfare cringe,’ but an authentic statement of biological and philosophical knowledge of wellbeing and how this knowledge is used in the design of any Lifetime Animal Welfare Index.”
Click here to view the final report.