Project background

While Switzerland generally has a very high Animal Health & Welfare standard, a system to assess and monitor the health and welfare status on farm or country level is lacking. The aim of this project was therefore to develop a method for objective, systematic and reliable assessment and evaluation of the health & welfare status of farm animals. Specific indicators for the most important animal species and production categories were developed, based on information from existing as well as potential new data sources.  With the participation of experts, stakeholders and consumers, the indicators were evaluated and refined. In the future, these indicators shall also be used to evaluate the success of animal health and welfare measures and to describe animal health trends across Switzerland.

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Our Work

SAFOSO had the lead in the WPs on stakeholder engagement and knowledge transfer. We thus organized multiple stakeholder workshops to discuss, validate and refine the welfare indicators and gain feedback from the different stakeholders. In addition, we developed several figure options to best visualize indicator results for both farmers and authorities.