Animal welfare indicators at the broiler slaughterhouse
In order to sell animal products at the best possible price, it is important to take into consideration what the consumer wants. Obviously, consumers want a tasty, safe and healthy product for the lowest possible price. However, they also increasingly look for products reflecting higher animal welfare standards, standards which are being monitored and improved.
In order to satisfy the demand for higher welfare animal products, the range of premium products has increased to bridge the difference between conventional and organic, and to give the consumer a variety of options based on their willingness to pay more for animal welfare. This has come with a range of labels and, consequently, welfare assurance schemes.
Limitations of welfare assurance schemes
Animal welfare assurance schemes rely heavily on indictors of the animals’ welfare. These can be indicators based on housing conditions, such as free-range systems, but also on the state of the animals, especially their health. Representatives of labelling schemes would conduct their assessment at the farm, which is a time-consuming task and is only a single point of time for a limited number of animals that are at that moment on the farm.
A potential other route of gaining insight in animal welfare is to assess welfare indicators at the slaughterhouse. This has the potential to assess all slaughtered animals in a standardised and routine manner, centralised at the slaughterhouses.
Assessment at the slaughterhouse
This is exactly what the project ‘aWISH’ is about. aWISH, which stands for Animal Welfare Indicators at the Slaughterhouse, is a 4-year project funded by the Horizon Europe programme. It started in 2022 and will continue until the end of 2026.
The project, which is coordinated by EV ILVO, Belgium, is a collaboration between 28 partners from 11 European countries. Their aim is to develop and deliver the capacity to assess and improve the welfare of meat-producing animals across Europe. The main route to achieve this is by developing automated monitoring of animal-based welfare indicators at the slaughterhouse and by providing advice to the meat sector on best practices.
Pilot sites across Europe
The project focuses on the pig and broiler production chain, with the collaboration of 6 slaughterhouses that operate as pilot sites. Pilot sites are located in the Netherlands, France, Spain, Poland, Austria and Serbia. Here, new monitoring technologies for automatically scoring welfare indicators are installed, tested and refined for their use in practice. Big companies such as Vion, Plukon and Battalé are involved in implementing the technologies.
At the pilot sites, data is collected for the development of a feedback tool. One of the aims is to create a catalogue of animal welfare indicators and good practice guides that can be used by the meat sector, and can support producers to use the tools. By providing information and technology to the sector, the project aspires to improve animal welfare throughout Europe.
Installing new technology
aWISH has so far successfully implemented 15 new technologies across 6 regional pig and broiler production chain pilots in Europe, resulting in 24 new installations. For broilers, the test sites are in France and Poland. Both sites are using the EBENE app (Itavi) to assess animal welfare during farm visits. In France, several technologies have been installed. The EBroilerTrack Image (Itavi) tracks the activity of individual broiler activity on-farm, while the EBroilerTrack Sound (Itavi) monitors the vocalisations in the lairage of the slaughterhouse.
The Stunning Effectiveness technology (Wel2be) checks whether the birds move after stunning and thereby assesses stunning effectiveness. The ChickenCheck Hockburn and Footpad (CLK) technology measures hockburn and footpad lesions at the slaughter line, thus giving an indication of the welfare of the broilers during the rearing phase.
The transport phase is also being monitored, through sensors implemented in the crates to monitor the transport conditions, CO2, relative humidity and temperature. In Poland, the EBENE app (Itavi) was also introduced at the farms alongside the ChickenCheck Hockburn and Footpad (CLK). Additionally, the ChickenCheck Catch Damage (CLK) was installed, which can give an indication of animal welfare during catching and handling. The technology automatically measures the catch damage on the legs, wings and breast of the broilers.
Prospect
The project is halfway through its 4-year trajectory. So far, a list of animal welfare indicators for broilers has been developed and the technologies to measure each indicator were identified. The pilot sites are refining the functioning of the technology, and the data collected through these technologies will feed the aWISH data platform. The beta-version of the data platform will be released, tested and validated by the end of this year. Stakeholders along the production chain will be able to consult this platform and monitor results from their own farms and animals.
aWISH also implemented an Expert Panel, in which experts from every point of the farm-to-fork chain can engage in fruitful discussions about the project results, sharing their insights and actively contributing to the achievement of the project objectives. To participate in this panel, you can register at Join Expert Panel – aWISH (awish-project.eu).
*Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only; neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them.
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