Animal welfare in livestock production is an important topic for the well-being of animals, the entire livestock sector, policy makers, and citizens. Broilers and pigs, the main meat-producing animals in the EU and worldwide, are the farm animals with the most animal welfare concerns expressed by EU citizens. EU legislation regulates farm animal welfare through resource-based measures, but there is a need for a large scale automatic monitoring of animal welfare using animal-based measures.
Animal-based indicators assessing the outcome of resources and management on the animals themselves are a good alternative and direct way for evaluating animal welfare. The slaughterhouse is a suitable place for assessing a large number of animals, as they come from various farms, which allows for high labour efficiency and better biosecurity. However, continuous and objective monitoring of outcome-indicators of each slaughter batch by humans is challenging without slowing down the line speed. Rapid technological development and artificial intelligence can overcome these limitations.
The aWISH project focuses on large-scale, automated welfare monitoring of animal-based indicators at the slaughterhouse, that are related to welfare on-farm, during (un)loading, transport, and slaughter. Novel sensors will be developed and tested to measure these indicators, enabling continuous and automatic data collection. The aim is to use this data for feedback and advice on best practices to those responsible for the broilers and pigs throughout their lifetime (farmer, catching team, transporter, slaughterhouse). This approach will be developed and evaluated in close collaboration with all actors involved, from the livestock farmers up to policy makers and citizens.
