Scottish Animal Welfare Commission: Good Food Nation animal welfare indicators

3. Current indicators in the GFN plan

Currently there are 4 suggested indicators for welfare under Sub-outcome 2c, these are:

1) Proportion of Scottish consumers concerned about animal welfare (assessed by Food Standards Agency (FSA) surveys), currently 75% highly or somewhat concerned.

2) Proportion of laying hens reared as free-range or organic – currently 78%.

3) Number of livestock animals inspected by Local Authority per annum in Scotland.

4) Herd prevalence of bovine TB in Scotland (0.1% in 2024).

Although some of these indicators are potentially interesting, they do not cover most of the species farmed in Scotland and some are already at very low prevalence (incidence of bovine TB) or likely to be influenced by other factors, for example number of welfare complaints or Local Authority finances for metric (3). However, we believe that with some adjustments, there is some value in retaining some of these indicators as discussed below:

1) Proportion of Scottish consumers concerned about animal welfare: This indicator doesn’t actually assess welfare but understanding concern for welfare in society and consumers is relevant. This may also be the only measure that could allow us to assess any aspect of animal welfare related to consumed foods (albeit indirectly), as most other indicators are likely to be restricted to data sources from animals living and killed in Scotland, or the UK. This indicator could be enhanced by looking at, e.g. consumer purchasing of higher welfare products (e.g. Kantar databases, these are used by research studies in Scottish Government RESAS-funded work), which may provide better insight if concern for animal welfare is translated into actual buying behaviour. This may also provide value in understanding what proportion of animal-source foods consumed in Scotland were raised in Scotland and thus link to other indicators of welfare. For processed foods, however, the method and place of production may not be visible to data searches.

2) Proportion of laying hens reared as free-range or organic: although this is a resource-based indicator there is evidence of a greater ability of some hens to express positive exploration in free range systems (although not all hens will go outside in these systems) and these systems do provide nest boxes, perching and dust-bathing opportunities^[14,15]. We consider that this indicator could be expanded to encompass other species (see below).

3) Number of livestock animals inspected by Local Authority per annum in Scotland: we do not consider this to be a valuable indicator as there are too many confounding variables that make it unlikely to be well linked to animal experience. However, use of Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) or other inspection data, for example, from Red Tractor or other inspections, may provide some useful baseline data (see below).

4) Herd prevalence of bovine TB in Scotland: as TB occurs at such a low rate, and is focused on a single species, it does not provide a very informative indicator of animal welfare in Scotland. As a notifiable disease data are clearly collected already, but other notifiable diseases, such as sheep scab, could also be included as this causes severe welfare issues for this species^[16]. However, there may be some additional merit in assessing baseline and tracking data on signal diseases in different species, some of which could be assessed at the abattoir as part of Food Standards Scotland (FSS) data collection (see below).

OneKind has previously suggested some alternative indicators^[17]. These include method of production indicators of number of animals in confinement systems (laying hens in colony cages, sows in farrowing crates and single housed dairy calves). We consider that these measures, although resource-based as with laying hens in free range systems, have some merit as they deal with known and well-researched sources of frustration, anxiety and fear in farmed animals^[18-21]. We have expanded on these points below.