To meet the changing expectations of its members, the regulator and the Australian community, the livestock export industry has shifted to measuring animal welfare on board livestock ships as a measure of performance, rather than counting how many animals make it to their destination alive.
However, assessing the welfare of animals – as opposed to their health – is a complex task, in part because different animals respond differently to the same set of circumstances.
Significant research has been done – funded by LiveCorp and Meat & Livestock Australia – on the development of scientifically valid, objective animal welfare indicators, taking into account factors ranging from the behaviour of animals to their environment and shipboard management practices. This helps with the management of livestock on board export ships, including the ability to identify risks and prevent these from becoming issues.
This work has fed into multiple regulatory reviews of welfare standards, and the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, as regulator, last year determined the measures it required to be collected and reported on for each livestock voyage from Australia.
LiveCorp research has not only assisted in determining the welfare measures to be collected, but has streamlined the data-gathering process through construction of its collaborative data collection system, LIVEXCollect. This provides templates to standardise the way the data is collected to enhance accuracy and support efficiencies.
Collecting welfare data in a systematic way will allow a greater level of analysis and transparency for the industry and the community, to support ongoing improvements to decision making and operational efficiency as well as transparency and accountability, and to contribute to research efforts.
The data collected will also allow benchmarking of outcomes between shipments and exporters, and encourage regulation based on performance.