Animal welfare as a pillar of a sustainable farm animal production

Despite research and legislation carried out in the last decades, we are still in progress to fulfil the public concerns about the definition of sustainable production standards as regards the welfare of farm animals. The assessment of animal welfare on-farm is nowadays one of the outstanding issues for several reasons: 1) identify risk factors still present at the farm level for livestock welfare, 2) find solutions to overcome welfare problems, 3) define minimum requirements for all the farm animals species and categories or refine the exiting recommendations, 4) create certification schemes for labelling welfare friendly farm animal products. Ideally a standardized welfare assessment protocol should be based on a multidisciplinary approach but, for feasibility reasons, most of the proposed monitoring schemes have been based mainly on the evaluation of farm housing and facilities. The Welfare Quality® research consortium is currently working on a new assessment tool largely based on valid and reliable measures recorded by clinical and behavioural observation of the animals. Differing from the existing protocols for animal welfare assessment, the Welfare Quality® scheme aims to be a valuable support to farmers and the animal industry in their efforts to improve the welfare status of farm animals. Therefore the system shall provide a feedback of information on how to improve welfare along the productive chain of farm animals. The routine application of this type of assessment schemes appears an effective tool to promote a general improvement of the quality of life of farm animals as well as to address the consumer choices towards welfare friendly animal foodstuffs.