Background Animal welfare improvement is the purpose of our project. All of the five organisations involved in our proposal are highly respected organisations and include specialists in inspection and certification of organic livestock farms. Organic management aims to deliver excellent animal welfare and independent annual inspection and certification aims to confirm this and provide a guarantee that animals have a ‘good life’ that meets the high expectations of consumers who buy organic animal products. Any failure to deliver on this aspect risks undermining the reputation of organic inspection and certification through the EU. The problem that we will address is that the legally defined standards for delivering welfare are resourced based e.g. space per animal in housing, type of housing, type of feed, are becoming outdated. Experience and recent scientific knowledge indicates that this approach alone is now insufficient. A new scientifically informed evaluation of the animals to determine their ‘welfare outcomes’ is more meaningful in underpinning the inspection process and aiding communication of any deficiencies to farmers in a way that they can understand and act upon. Objectives The use of ‘welfare outcomes’ is a new and emerging approach that each of the partners has been developing in their own standards and inspection systems. The time is now right for these pioneering organisations to come together to share experience, evaluate our current work and developed a common and coherent concept. When this is agreed we will make it into an accessible and easily disseminated training and learning package available to other organisations with the support of an University to support an optimum training approach. We aim to add this to the widely accepted inspection toolkit that has already been successfully initiated under a previous project by the lead partner organisation GfRS. Methodology, project management and quality assurance Our proposal carefully assigns responsibility and coordinates a stepwise approach to each of these activities as well as ensuring proactive dissemination through multiple platforms including seminars, specialist media and the internet to communication the project outputs and foresees an independent evaluation of the work and impact of the project. The work of the partners will be facilitated by Skype meetings, meetings in person and training events. Our approach to welfare assessment will be piloted and evaluated on farms over the widely different farming systems associated with the diverse geographical locations of the partners and will, therefore, produce robust output that is widely relevant and applicable throughout the whole of the EU. Impact and long term benefits This work will allow high quality and consistent learning by organic inspectors to improve their performance in and delivery of animal welfare using a harmonised robust approach to assessment. It will benefit the individuals involved, their organisations, the organic farmers and the wider organic sector that will have access to the high quality ‘Inspector toolkit’ learning and training materials. It will have a positive and lasting impact on the welfare of thousands of farmed animals throughout the EU.
Background The AWARE Project targets the improvement of animal welfare in organic livestock husbandry. Organic animal production aims to deliver excellent animal welfare, while independent annual inspection and certification aims to confirm this and to provide a guarantee on a ‘good life’ of farm animals, meeting the high expectations of consumers buying organic animal products. Any failure in the delivery of the aspect of animal welfare risks undermining of the reputation of organic production as well as inspection and certification throughout the EU. The legally defined standards for delivering welfare were interpreted in the past in a resource oriented way, including e.g. space per animal in housing, type of housing, and type of feed. The exclusive use of resource related criteria is becoming outdated, as experience and recent scientific knowledge indicate insufficiency of this approach alone. An innovative and scientifically informed evaluation of the animals in order to determine their ‘welfare outcomes’ is more meaningful in underpinning the inspection process and aiding communication of any deficiencies to farmers in a way that they can understand and act upon. Number and profile of participating organisations The six organisations which participated in the AWARE project delivered specialist knowledge on the inspection and certification of organic livestock farms, being competent and highly qualified in animal welfare inspections. These organisations included three organic control bodies, namely Gesellschaft für Ressourcenschutz mbH (Germany), CCPB srl (Italy), and Agro Bio Test sp. z o. o. (Poland), further project partners were leading organic farmers associations with a high competence in animal welfare inspections (Soil Association (UK), Naturland e.V. (Germany)). The Georg-August-University of Göttingen (Germany) brought learning and teaching competence to the project. Objectives and undertaken main activities The inspection of ‘welfare outcomes’ is an emerging approach that the partners pursued in their own standards and inspection systems. The AWARE project included the interconnection of these pioneering organisations, to share experiences, evaluate the preceding work and to develop a common and coherent concept on organic animal welfare inspections. After agreement on a concept of common animal-related criteria, an accessible training and learning package was created with the support of a University and made available to other organisations, being easy to disseminate to support an optimum training approach. The concept added to the widely accepted inspection toolkit that has been successfully initiated under a previous project by the lead partner organisation GfRS. Methodology, project management and quality assurance The Project coordinated a stepwise approach to the activities as well as ensuring proactive dissemination through multiple platforms, including seminars, specialist media, and the internet for communication of the project outputs. The work of the partners was facilitated by Skype meetings, face-to-face meetings and training activities. The approach to welfare assessment was tested and evaluated on farms over the different farming systems associated with the diverse geographical locations of the partners, therefore producing robust output that is widely relevant and applicable throughout the EU. The implementation of the AWARE concept was supported by a quality management component which included ongoing evaluation of the project implementation. Results, impact, and long term benefits The project outcomes allow consistent improvement of the performance in organic animal welfare inspections, using a harmonised robust approach to its assessment. It benefits the individuals involved, their organisations, the organic farmers and the wider organic sector that now has access to the high quality learning and training materials. Thus, a positive and lasting impact on the welfare of thousands of farmed animals throughout the EU is expected.