P.PSH.0807 - Welfare benchmarking and management for the beef cattle and sheep meat industries

Summary

The project will introduce a new framework for describing and assessing animal welfare criteria for use across Australia’s red meat industries. The framework will enable management of information on the animal welfare status of individual enterprises and identify options available to them for improving their performance. It will achieve this by describing welfare status, benchmarking against established comparative assessments and collecting evidence of continuous improvement against a baseline. Superior performers identified by the benchmarking analysis can also become a source of knowledge about management practices for others.

Objectives

This aim of this project was to develop a producer driven system that will allow welfare data to be collected industry wide in a way that is valid, repeatable and feasible for producers. Measures were derived from the literature and then refined based on stakeholder consultation and testing within a commercial environment. An online data entry and reporting platform was developed to collate and provide feedback to participants on welfare outcomes on their properties.

Key findings

As a result of this project, an extensive suite of welfare indicators was developed in consultation with stakeholders. These welfare indicators have proven to be reliable, valid and feasible under a range of commercial conditions across Australia. An online data entry platform was developed to allow for the collection and automated reporting of data back to individual producers. Feedback from producers was generally positive although uptake of the program may be reliant on the ability to minimise double handling of data and provide adequate incentives for participation.

Benefits to industry

This includes the ability to demonstrate accountability and transparency, collate data on the industry's position on animal welfare and show continual improvement into the future. Individual producers within the industry will be able to see how their welfare performance compares to others and learn from top producers. Producers can them make incremental improvements to welfare while retaining ownership over the process. Overall, the benchmarking measures and data platform developed in the project can provide the basis for industry assurance programs that can be tailored to specific industry or business needs.

MLA action

• Expanding the system across the beef supply chain.
• Developing a similar benchmarking system for other species such as sheep and goats.
• Refining for the more extensive Northern Beef Cattle industry.