The scientific understanding of farm animal welfare has advanced significantly over the last five decades. The most dominant framework The Five Freedoms was first proposed over 50 years ago and helps to define the mental and physical needs of kept animals by primarily aiming for ‘freedom from’ negative welfare states. The 1994 Five Domains framework acknowledged how the mental state of animals is affected by four physiological “domains”. More recently it has been proposed that farm animal welfare needs to go beyond avoidance of negatives toward providing an environment that actively promotes positive experiences and emotions for animals,, (Figure 1), impacting the way in which we farm animals and what resources we provide them.
Alongside an increased understanding of animal welfare, we have also seen increasing pressure from NGOs, through the use of public benchmarking for food businesses, to provide increased transparency on the practices, performance and impact they are having on farm animal welfare within supply chains. While the focus so far has been on terrestrial species such as poultry and pigs kept in intensive farming systems, we have seen in recent years an increasing interest in aquaculture. This presentation will provide an overview of the key areas of focus for farm animal welfare and look at the expectations for reporting in farm animal supply chains.