Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
nutrient leaching (discussed by Hermansen
et al
.,
2004). Concerns about pasture damage can be
addressed by using nose rings, which prevent
rooting by making it painful to press the snout
against the ground (Horrell
et al
., 2001). Thus,
even within outdoor systems, trade-offs may
be made between the welfare of the animals
(e.g. their ability to engage in rooting behaviour
use of painful nose rings) and environmental
concerns (e.g. pasture quality, damage, nutrient
leaching). This example highlights the need
to consider all aspects of a production system,
including both welfare and environmental
implications, in order to assess sustainability.
weighted more heavily than naturalness in
assessments of welfare then conventional cages
are the preferred system, but if naturalness is
weighted more than physical functioning then
alternative systems like cage-free or free-range
will be preferred. These differences in values are
often borne out in public policy. For example, as
of 2012 the European Union has banned con-
ventional cages but still allows enriched cages;
however, specific European countries, such as
Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, have either
already banned both conventional and enriched
cages or plan to do so (Kerswell, 2011). Both the
European Union and the governments of these
countries had access to the same scientific evi-
dence evaluating hen-housing systems but
weighed public values differently, thus leading to
different public policy decisions. This, of course,
also raises questions about the sustainability of
the enriched colony housing system being pro-
posed for adoption in the USA, given that it is still
unclear whether this system will satisfy public
values about hen welfare.
As with sustainability in general, there has
been increasing interest in developing scientifi-
cally based metrics and weighting systems to
assess animal welfare. This has been driven in
large part by the growth of certification pro-
grammes that require farms to be scored in order
to determine if they pass or fail animal welfare
audits (Mench, 2008; Swanson
et al
., 2011).
These approaches, which often include identify-
ing relevant welfare measures based on experi-
mental and on-farm scientific data and then
ranking and integrating those measures based
on expert opinion, are useful steps forward but
cannot eliminate value judgements (Swanson
et al
., 2011). Because of the value judgements
inherent to all 'wicked' problems like assessment
of animal welfare or sustainability, it has been
suggested that participatory integration strate-
gies, which involve dialogue among stakehold-
ers, may be the most promising approaches to
building consensus about the relative impor-
tance of sustainability criteria (Swanson
et al
.,
2011; Thompson
et al
., 2011).
Participatory integration strategies have
been used to incorporate animal welfare con-
siderations into sustainability assessment.
Mollenhorst and de Boer (2004) used a partici-
patory analysis involving a heterogeneous
group of stakeholders, including retailers, egg
Animal welfare and assessment
of sustainability
Assessments of sustainability and animal welfare
are riddled with difficulty, both when considered
separate issues (e.g. environmental sustainability
or animal welfare alone) and in combination with
each other. This difficulty arises because decisions
about what is sustainable depend not just upon
science, but also upon societal values. With envi-
ronmental issues, for example, let us say that a
(hypothetical) alternative housing system for ani-
mals is found to have positive effects on air quality
but negative effects on water quality compared
with conventional systems (as might be true
for free-range compared with confined poultry
production). The question then arises as to how
to weigh the relative importance of these two
aspects of environmental impact, a question that
can only be resolved by considering values.
Similar kinds of problems arise when evaluating
changes that have multiple economic impacts, for
example economically advantaging some pro-
ducers (say, large producers) while disadvantag-
ing others (say, small producers).
With respect to animal welfare, similar types
of conflicts in assessment arise because individu-
als vary in the extent to which they value the
various aspects of welfare, such as physical func-
tioning or naturalness. Again, conventional
cages for hens are an example of this kind of con-
flict. Hens in conventional cages have an overall
better health status than hens in non-cage sys-
tems, but are severely restricted behaviourally
(Lay
et al
., 2011). If physical functioning is
