Anna joins FAD to lead on delivering AssureWel Project
Anna Fraser has joined the RSPCA farm animals department (FAD) to help manage a pioneering new project, working with the Soil Association (SA) and the Veterinary School at Bristol University to incorporate an animal welfare outcomes assessment as a routine part of the Freedom Food and SA inspection process.
As part of the AssureWel project, welfare assessments will be conducted on up to 133 Freedom Food farms in early 2011 - designed to test the practicality of using the EU’s proposed WelfareQuality® system for welfare outcome assessment (www.welfarequality.net).
The assessments on these randomly selected units will cover dairy, laying hen and pig units. To allow for a measure of independence and scientific objectivity these visits will be carried out by SA Assessors. Freedom Food assessors will do the same on the SA farms.
What does this involve?
Selected Freedom Food members will be contacted to ask whether they are willing to take part. If agreed, an assessor will then arrange to visit at a convenient time to record observations of the behaviour and condition of a sample of the animals and take some measurements of the housing. The types of things they will observe include body condition, lameness and - in the case of laying hens - feather loss.
On the day, all members need to do is provide the assessor with some basic details about their system and show the assessor to the relevant unit or units.
These visits will be separate from annual inspections and will not relate to on-going certification within the Freedom Food scheme. All the information collected will be anonymous and confidential.
“We appreciate that this is a request for some extra time from farmers who are already busy,” says Anna Fraser. “Priding ourselves on being practical, the RSPCA and Freedom Food would like to work with scheme members to find solutions for measuring welfare outcomes that work on farm and are not impractical.”
What’s in it for you?
As well as being part of an important project to improve farm animal welfare, participants will benefit from a full free welfare assessment, feedback and benchmarking on welfare. There will also be access to further free welfare advice.
“Providing feedback, advice and support is central to the project. We want producers to benefit from improved measurement of animal welfare and to confidently manage welfare issues, if they arise.” confirms Kate Still from SA.
For more information on the AssureWel Project please contact Anna Fraser by email anfraser@rspca.org.uk (or telephone 0300 123 0063)