Content available at:
Indonesia (Indonesian) Melayu (Malay) ไทย (Thai) Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) Philipino
Interest in animal welfare has increased over the years and is likely to remain on the agenda of producers and consumers of animal products.
The interest and evaluation of welfare has transcended theoretical concepts such as the five freedoms and has been applied in the development of new ones such as artificial intelligence.
The aim of this article is to highlight key concepts in welfare assessment and to point out some scientific advances for its evaluation by means of artificial intelligence.
ANIMAL WELFARE BACKGROUND
The World Organization for Animal Health, OIE, defines animal welfare as:
The physical and mental state of an animal in relation to the conditions in which it lives and dies, and refers to the also known as the five freedoms:
Free from hunger, thirst and malnutrition
Free from fear and distress
Free from physical and thermal discomfort
Free from pain, injury and illness
Free to manifest natural behavior
However, the use of the five freedoms as a means of animal welfare assessment may have some limitations when used in production animals such as poultry.
ANIMAL WELFARE CHALLENGES
Some of these challenges include the large number of animals, diverse housing types and species-specific characteristics.
Therefore, the use of objective and practical animal welfare indicators is recommended as a matter of routine practice.
Based on the animal(s): These are those that are evaluated directly on the animal and include physiological and behavioral changes and some other animal health indicators.
Resource-based: Includes direct observations of facilities and operations related to animal care and handling.
Management-based: Includes documentary review of animal health and care procedures and records.
There are recommendations on the criteria to be evaluated within each of these indicators, but there may be national and international differences, as well as differences between national and private standards.
WOAH encourages private standards to develop transparency mechanisms and to work towards harmonization between public and private standards.
PRINCIPLES OF AN ANIMAL WELFARE PROGRAM
In general an animal welfare program should be governed by the following principles from Main et al (2014):
Dynamic animal welfare management program: The program should be proactive and be able to promote continuous improvement.
Progressive stan...
