"More than the absence of abuse, animal welfare is about having a life worth living."
The certification Welfair® has set a new standard in animal welfare, based on principles of respect, science, and, above all, direct observation of the animal. This approach makes a fundamental difference: instead of assessing external conditions, it observes the animal in its environment, measuring its responses and its emotional and physical well-being. With this interview, we want to help you understand what animal welfare really is and how the approach of Welfair®, focused on the animal's own experience, is transforming the agri-food sector. In it, Antoni Dalmau, researcher at IRTA's Animal Welfare Program, expert in the development of animal welfare assessment protocols, coordinator of the Welfare Quality Network and member of the Scientific Committee of Welfair® shares his vision of how this methodology not only transforms the treatment of animals, but also provides an ethical and scientific standard for caregivers in the agri-food sector. For him, well-being should not only mean the absence of abuse, but also the presence of conditions that allow animals to live a life worth living.
A journey of vocation and science
From a young age, Antoni Dalmau felt a strong interest in animal behavior and life, which led him to study veterinary medicine. “Although I was close to choosing biology, I ultimately chose veterinary medicine,” he says. When he finished his degree and had the opportunity to pursue a doctorate, he chose to conduct research in wildlife, focusing on the behavior, habitat selection, social behavior, and feeding behavior of the chamois in the Pyrenees.
However, her shift to studying farm animals gave her a renewed sense of purpose: to improve welfare conditions for species such as pigs, cattle, poultry, and rabbits. She joined the Institute for Agrofood Research and Technology (IRTA), where she has worked for the past twenty years. "For me, animal welfare must mean a state of good physical and mental health. It involves understanding each stage of an animal's life, from birth to death. "My goal has always been to seek out all possible strategies to ensure that animals can live a dignified life, minimizing suffering and ensuring a high quality of life," Antoni reflects.
Animal welfare: focusing on the animal itself, not its environment
“Animal welfare isn't about looking at the state of the animal's environment, but rather how the animal interacts with that environment. And it's important that we understand this approach, why it's fair, for them and for us. Welfare is something that belongs to the animal, it's theirs, and it must be measured in the animal,” Dalmau points out when explaining the Animal-Based Approach. This concept focuses on measuring the animal's own well-being based on indicators that reflect its life experience. “For example, if the animal has injuries, if it limps, or shows signs of fear, these are direct signs that something is not right. And we can conclude that we don't know why the animal is afraid; maybe we don't find anything in the environment that explains it, but the reality is that this is what the animal is feeling and transmitting, and animal welfare is about that, about the life experience of that animal. On the contrary, when we look at the environment, whether the facilities or the management by the farmer himself, what we are evaluating are risk factors, which are interesting for a guide to good practices, but they tell you absolutely nothing about the state of animal welfare. For example, there is a hole in the ground, and it shouldn't be there to prevent the animals from getting hurt, but the fact that you have a document that says there is no hole in the ground on your farm tells you nothing about the welfare of the animals on that farm. What's more, even if there is a hole, you still won't know anything about the state of those animals; only that they live in a pen where they might get hurt because of it. from a hole in the ground. The difference in approach is important, and while it's good to use both approaches—that is, checking for holes in the ground and animals with limb injuries—the first is a risk assessment, and only the second is an animal welfare assessment," the scientist explains.
The Animal-Based Approach was developed over the years in various scientific forums, including the European Welfare Quality project, a project funded by the European Union, in response to the need to define animal welfare standards that could be used throughout the EU. “Just as animal welfare regulations are still often based on controlling risk factors, in the Welfare Quality project it was clear from the outset that if we wanted a tool to measure animal welfare and not just risk factors, we had to focus on measures derived from the animals themselves,” explains Dalmau. Welfare Quality discovered that it was crucial to establish a protocol based on direct and systematic observation of the animal, measuring its response and behavior.
“Behavior is an essential aspect in assessing welfare,” Dalmau emphasizes. “For us, assessing welfare involves allowing the animal to express its natural behaviors, that is, those that are unique to it as a species, and especially those that have become behavioral needs.” Thus, the Animal-Based approach It measures the interaction between the environment and the animal, assessing the consequences of this interaction on the individual itself. "This approach allows us to understand the animal from its own perspective, placing its well-being at the center of the assessment.", concludes the scientist.
The five domains of animal welfare: a new definition of quality of life
The shift from the “five freedoms” to the “five domains” represents a significant evolution in how we understand animal welfare. These five freedoms, developed in the UK in the 70s and 80s and inspired by Ruth Harrison's book Animal Machines (written in the 60s), established that animal welfare rested on five fundamental principles: that animals should be free from hunger, thirst, physical and thermal discomfort, injury, disease, fear, and pain, and that they should be able to express natural behaviors. “At the time, these freedoms served as a grand universal definition of animal welfare,” explains Dalmau, “but they were primarily focused on avoiding abuse, rather than fostering a positive state in the animal. In fact, if we look at something as simple as emotions, it focuses on two of them, indicating that the animal should not be afraid or in pain, but it doesn't discuss any other emotional states.”
Starting in the 2000s, this approach changed. On the one hand, the Welfare Quality project replaced the concept of the absence of fear (inherited from the five freedoms) with a positive emotional state (trying to explain that emotions go far beyond the absence of fear and pain). On the other hand, in the United Kingdom, the same council that had created the five freedoms declared them obsolete in 2009 and established a new concept, that of Life Worth Living,” comments Antoni, referring to the idea that animal welfare should provide the animal with a life worth living, not just a life without suffering. Years later, in 2016, the five domains were published, which are a natural evolution of the 4 principles of Welfare Quality, in which these become the first 4 domains of animal welfare and a fifth is created called mental state, assuming that it is the most important and where welfare is ultimately defined as such. In other words, animal welfare depends on good nutrition (first domain), a good environment (second domain), good health (third domain), appropriate behavior (fourth domain), and all of this will lead to the animal having a good emotional and mental state (fifth domain).
Currently, projects such as the European Partnership for Animal Health and Welfare and Action Cost Lift are developing new indicators to measure these emotional states under what are called positive welfare indicators. These indicators seek to observe not only when an animal is unwell, but also when it is in a positive state of well-being. "We have gone from seeing animal welfare solely as the absence of abuse to understanding it as a life worth living, which also includes positive experiences," concludes Dalmau, emphasizing that this shift toward five domains offers a much more comprehensive and enriching view of animal welfare.
The birth of Welfair®
The birth of Welfair® has its roots in the Welfare Quality project, "Welfare Quality established standards for cattle, pork, and poultry, and had a significant budget to develop these protocols." This effort sought, among other things, to respond to the growing demand from European consumers for products that respected animal welfare. Subsequently, through the AWIN project and with the participation of NEIKER scientists, the development of protocols using the same methodology for new species continued.
Likewise, Welfair® is based on rigorous scientific criteria that ensure the validity of its protocols. It not only seeks the well-being of the most well-known species, such as cattle and birds, but also cares for less common ones.