National farm assurance scheme demonstrates welfare outcome improvements for sustainable intensification of dairy production

ABSTRACT

Animal welfare is a key pillar of sustainability in livestock farming but can be challenging to deliver improvements when productivity is high. In October 2013, the Red Tractor UK national dairy assurance scheme introduced welfare outcome monitoring on its 11,500 farms, covering 95% of UK milk produced. Here we show that 98 farm assurance assessors achieved high levels of agreement with a gold standard and report data they collected for three years from 248,689 cows, typically 10 cows per farm, during 19,899 audits. Between 2013 and 2014, and 2015 and 2016, the estimated national prevalence fell significantly for lameness (from 10.0% to 7.9%), dirtiness (from 12.4% to 9.2%), ‘hairloss, lesions and swellings’ (from 9.3% to 6.5%), and fat cows (from 2.4% to 1.9%). This occurred at a time when milk yield per cow increased. We have demonstrated an effective implementation strategy suitable for uptake internationally to align with societal sustainability goals.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable intensification
• animal welfare
• farm assurance
• dairy cows
• welfare outcomes

Acknowledgements

We thank the farm assessors who collected the data for this study, in all weather.

Disclosure statement

No authors have received any financial interest or benefit that has arisen from direct result of this research.

Data availability

The welfare outcome data of dairy cattle presented in this paper is owned by the Red Tractor farm assurance scheme as part of Assured Food Standards and is commercially sensitive and therefore not publicly available. Requests for access should be directed in the first instance to the corresponding author.

Author contributions

SM helped design the implementation programme, conducted training of assessors, undertook analysis and wrote the manuscript. PW helped design the implementation programme and facilitated data extraction. KC facilitated data extraction and contributed to the manuscript. DCJM led the implementation programme design and contributed to the analysis. KS helped design the implementation programme and conducted training of assessors. MC helped design the implementation programme, led the training of assessors and undertook some analysis. AWD undertook the modelling and contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Tubney Charitable Trust through the AssureWel project under which this work was conducted. Prof Dowsey was supported by The Alan Turing Institute under the EPSRC grant EP/N510129/1.

Notes on contributors

Siobhan Mullan

Siobhan Mullan is Professor of Animal Welfare and Veterinary Ethics at UCD, Dublin. She is a veterinary surgeon and her research focuses on the use of valid, reliable and feasible welfare assessments to drive welfare improvements.

Philippa Wiltshire

Philippa Wiltshire is Head of Operations at Red Tractor Assurance. Philippa is responsible for industry, regulatory and stakeholder liaison in relation to technical assurance activities as well as managing the six sector boards. She also oversees the delivery of RTA IT strategy to ensure RTA data and electronic services meet the requirements of RTA, members and the wider industry.

Kate Cross

Kate Cross is Technical Manager - Compliance at Red Tractor Assurance. Kate is responsible for working with Certification Bodies and their assessors to ensure all Red Tractor assessments are delivered in a consistent and professional manner. Kate is also responsible for witnessing assessors and managing the Red Tractor training academy.

David CJ Main

David CJ Main is a veterinary surgeon and Professor of Production of Animal Health and Welfare at the Royal Agricultural University. He has research interests in science and practice of knowledge exchange, animal welfare assessment and improvement strategies and animal welfare education. Former member of the Farm Animal Welfare Council, Food Ethics Council and Soil Association Council. He is chair of Home Office Animals in Science Committee and member of McDonald’s Global Chicken Sustainability Advisory Council.

Kate Still

Kate Still has been at the Soil Association since 2010, leading farmer advise on livestock health and welfare; and more recently taking on overall management of the producer focused farming programmes. She primarily works with producers, inspectors/assessors, vets and farm advisors and is a specialist in the implementation of welfare outcome assessment as part of farm assurance schemes. Her career has also included practical farming, farm business consultancy and advising farmers in wild plant and habitat conservation.

Madeleine Crawley

Madeleine Crawley is a veterinary surgeon and farmer. She is a Board Member of RSPCA Assured.

Andrew W. Dowsey

Andrew W. Dowsey is Chair of Population Health Data Science at the University of Bristol, a joint post between the Department of Population Health Sciences and Bristol Veterinary School. His data science expertise lies at the interface of health sciences and engineering and his research focus is on the facilitation and acceleration of health sciences research through novel statistical modelling and machine learning methodology, as well as data collection and management platforms.