Quanitying Welfare Improvements in the Live Export Industry

Summary

​The way workers handle animals presents a risk to an animal's welfare. The Live Export Program (LEP) has provided extensive support in live export markets to educate workers on the best and safest ways to handle animals and improve animal welfare. This project aimed to gather objective data of the changes in animal handling following the delivery of LEP's Live Export Training Program to workers.

In order to do this, data on the behaviour of animals during handling, the behaviour of workers and their understanding of good animal welfare needed to be collected before and after training. Data needed to be collected immediately following training and three months afterwards to assess the longevity of change. Along with collecting evidence of these welfare improvements, results will produce key performance indicators that can be used to measure and benchmark animal welfare and handling.