Publicação
Evaluation of the Welfare Quality® Assessment protocol for pigs: a farm-to-abattoir approach
| Resumo: | In this study, the Welfare Quality® assessment (WQ® ) protocol for pigs was applied on 10 lots of 774 finishing pigs, from 10 Dutch farms, before their leave to slaughter and after their arrival at the abattoir. Spearman’s correlations between farms WQ® protocol variables were calculated. To find if the application of an adapted version of the WQ® protocol – the Slaughterhouse Adapted Protocol (SAP) – could be applied at slaughterhouse and have the same Animal Welfare (AW) outcomes of the original, Wilcoxon tests were taken. Lastly, the Spearman’s correlations between post mortem findings (pneumonia, pleuritis, pericarditis and white spots on the liver) and farms’ AW classifications were analysed. The farms’ AW final classifications were: 5 “acceptable” and 5 “enhanced”. Good Health (GHE) was the principle with the lowest score average, being the score highly influenced for the fact that all farms tail docked their pigs. On farms, pig’s behaviours were negatively correlated with the presence of diseases in the herd. The farms with higher scores on Positive Emotional State (PES) criterion, that is happier animals, are also the farms where the pigs showed less fear of humans. It was not possible to fairly classify all the farms AW using the SAP as 4 of the 10 farms diminished their classification from WQ® protocol on farms to SAP. The need of elimination of building-dependent measures, the influence of transportation, the changing of environment and the mixing of animals are possible reasons for these final classifications’ differences. However, some criteria and measures were not statistically different between both protocols, namely: lean animals, bursitis level 2, manure on the body, lameness level 2, tail biting, coughing, pumping, ruptures and hernias level 2, skin condition and fear of humans. It means that these measures can be assessed on slaughterhouse and by this way avoid the need of farms visits to evaluate them. There was no tendency for farms with higher percentage of post mortem findings being the farms with lower classification from the WQ® protocol on farms. However, the 4 post mortem findings had positive correlations between them and mortality. So, it seems that high mortality rates, by themselves, are a good indicator of herd health status and consequently AW level. Assessment of AW at slaughterhouse is an important tool to score farms trends in some AW issues, such as tail biting, coughing, fear of humans, among others. The higher feasibility of application of this protocol at slaughterhouse, comparatively on farms, points out the importance of development of a protocol to be applied at this level of food chain. |
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| Autores principais: | Silva, Inês Rufino da |
| Assunto: | Animal Welfare Pigs |
| Ano: | 2019 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | dissertação de mestrado |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso restrito |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório da UTAD |
| Resumo: | In this study, the Welfare Quality® assessment (WQ® ) protocol for pigs was applied on 10 lots of 774 finishing pigs, from 10 Dutch farms, before their leave to slaughter and after their arrival at the abattoir. Spearman’s correlations between farms WQ® protocol variables were calculated. To find if the application of an adapted version of the WQ® protocol – the Slaughterhouse Adapted Protocol (SAP) – could be applied at slaughterhouse and have the same Animal Welfare (AW) outcomes of the original, Wilcoxon tests were taken. Lastly, the Spearman’s correlations between post mortem findings (pneumonia, pleuritis, pericarditis and white spots on the liver) and farms’ AW classifications were analysed. The farms’ AW final classifications were: 5 “acceptable” and 5 “enhanced”. Good Health (GHE) was the principle with the lowest score average, being the score highly influenced for the fact that all farms tail docked their pigs. On farms, pig’s behaviours were negatively correlated with the presence of diseases in the herd. The farms with higher scores on Positive Emotional State (PES) criterion, that is happier animals, are also the farms where the pigs showed less fear of humans. It was not possible to fairly classify all the farms AW using the SAP as 4 of the 10 farms diminished their classification from WQ® protocol on farms to SAP. The need of elimination of building-dependent measures, the influence of transportation, the changing of environment and the mixing of animals are possible reasons for these final classifications’ differences. However, some criteria and measures were not statistically different between both protocols, namely: lean animals, bursitis level 2, manure on the body, lameness level 2, tail biting, coughing, pumping, ruptures and hernias level 2, skin condition and fear of humans. It means that these measures can be assessed on slaughterhouse and by this way avoid the need of farms visits to evaluate them. There was no tendency for farms with higher percentage of post mortem findings being the farms with lower classification from the WQ® protocol on farms. However, the 4 post mortem findings had positive correlations between them and mortality. So, it seems that high mortality rates, by themselves, are a good indicator of herd health status and consequently AW level. Assessment of AW at slaughterhouse is an important tool to score farms trends in some AW issues, such as tail biting, coughing, fear of humans, among others. The higher feasibility of application of this protocol at slaughterhouse, comparatively on farms, points out the importance of development of a protocol to be applied at this level of food chain. |
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