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Consultation of pig farmers on the inclusion of some welfare outcome assessments within UK farm assurance
Author(s) -
Mullan S.,
Butterworth A.,
Whay H. R.,
Edwards S.,
Main D. C. J.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
veterinary record
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.261
H-Index - 99
eISSN - 2042-7670
pISSN - 0042-4900
DOI - 10.1136/vr.c2893
Subject(s) - welfare , animal welfare , inclusion (mineral) , productivity , business , agricultural science , quality assurance , medicine , veterinary medicine , marketing , economic growth , psychology , political science , economics , biology , social psychology , ecology , service (business) , law
Fifty‐six pig farmers who attended a series of health seminars completed a questionnaire to assess their attitude to the inclusion of some welfare outcome assessments within farm assurance. In answer to open questions, farmers were most commonly proud of the productivity (27.5 per cent) and welfare (23.5 per cent) of the pigs on their farm, and the welfare of pigs in the UK industry as a whole (26.1 per cent). The most common thing that farmers wanted to tell consumers about was the welfare of the pigs (55.8 per cent), followed by their stockmanship qualities, the quality of their pig meat and the safety of their pig meat (all 13.5 per cent). In answer to closed questions, 66 per cent of farmers stated they would be either quite willing or very willing to perform welfare self‐assessments as part of farm assurance, and 66 per cent would be quite or very willing to be anonymously benchmarked on the welfare of their pigs.