Survey on animal welfare in 943 Italian dairy farms

Abstract

The final results of a survey on welfare of dairy cows in 7 Italian Regions are presented. The study has been performed on 943 farms in southern and central Italy to highlight critical and strong points concerning animal welfare in dairy systems, by using direct and indirect criteria. To assess animal welfare, a check-list based on 303 parameters has been used; indirect criteria have been organized in 5 general areas concerning “Farm management”, “Farming and housing systems”, “Environment”, “Feeding”, “Health and hygiene”; other resource-based criteria were considered in 5 specific areasfor the different productive categories (lactating cows, dry cows, pregnant heifers, cows comeback, calves up to 8 weeks and calves between 8 weeks and 6 months); finally, an “Indicators” section focusedon animal based criteria. Parameters have been valued as “conforming” or “not conforming” on the basis of the current lesgislation on animal welfare, and in the other cases by the use of a semi-quantitative scale such as “poor”, “satisfactory”, “good” or “very good”, referring to scientific literature and reports by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Animal Health and Animal Welfare (AHAW) panel. Among the 249 examined parameters (54 criteria have been valued as “descriptive”), 15 showed a failure prevalence inferior to 1%; for the remaining parameters, the overall noncompliance prevalence on the whole sample ranged from a maximum of 67% to a minimum of 2%, showing an inverse proportionality correlation with the herd size. 110 parameters were judged as “poor” (96) or “not in compliance” with the rules in force (14) in more than 10% of the examined herds. The most common non-compliance aspects detected in the different areas concern calves management, staff training and prophylaxis programs; staff training levels were inversely related to failure prevalences in almost all areas. The combination of direct and indirect criteria has allowed to fully embrace recommendations on the use of animal based measures for the assessment of animal welfare, as accepted into the strategic Plan for the EU animal welfare for 2012-2015.