Improving farm animal welfare through welfare outcome assessment
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About AssureWel
The AssureWel Manual - The AssureWel approach to improving farm animal welfare through the use of welfare outcome assessment in farm assurance. The manual outlines the key elements of our approach so that others wishing to undertake similar work can learn from our experience.
AssureWel Benchmarking Tool allows you to compare your feather loss scores to other non-caged industry flocks*, aids self assessment, and provides guidance on addressing risk factors and improving performance on feather cover. * Compares your scores to those collected during farm assessment visits on Freedom Food and Soil Association farms.
To ensure we are improving farm animal welfare we need to be able to measure it. Measuring welfare enables us to know what level is being achieved on-farm and therefore better understand what impact the resources being provided and management practices being implemented are having on the animals. To this end, the AssureWel project aims to develop a system of welfare outcome assessment for the major farm animal species, so welfare can be measured and provide a basis for improvements to be made. These assessments will be developed for use by both assurance schemes and producers. More about the AssureWel project
Welfare outcome assessment is a practical and scientifically informed way of assessing and measuring animal welfare. It aims to provide an objective, accurate and direct picture of animal welfare. More about welfare outcome assessment
Encouraging a consistent industry-wide approach, the AssureWel project is working with leading industry bodies including Red Tractor Assurance, Quality Meat Scotland, BPEX, UK Organic Certifying Bodies and major retailers.