Animal welfare on organic mixed livestock farms across seven European countries

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Summary

Over the last decades, farms have become more specialised. This creates challenges on different levels - for example, nutrient deficiencies in the soil or financial instability due to market price fluctuations. as the call for more sustainable farming has become louder alternatives have been explored, such as more diversified farming by keeping several livestock species and thereby for example increasing financial stability. keeping several livestock species on one farm may impact the welfare of the animals, which is one dimension of sustainable farming - for example, in terms of animal health or social acceptance of animal products for sale. To gain a more thorough understanding of the benefits, challenges and management practises on organic mixed livestock farms we conducted interviews with 119 farmers in seven European countries. Various topics were broached to characterise each farm, by asking qualitative and quantitative questions, thereby producing answers to a total of more than 100 items per farm. Our animal welfare data includes housing conditions, pasture management, veterinary treatments and costs, mortality rate, time that farmers spend with their animals and farmers’ perception of their animals’ welfare. For this contribution, we make a comparison between countries and focus on farms with two combinations of animals, i.e. beef cattle with meat sheep (in France and Sweden) and beef cattle with poultry (in France and Germany). Preliminary descriptive analysis revealed some differences between countries in both combinations for various parameters of animal welfare. However, variation may mostly be explained by climatic differences and farming types (e.g. intensive vs. extensive grazing strategies) and therefore it is not possible to form firm conclusions regarding the animals’ welfare in mixed livestock farms.

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• Animal welfare on organic mixed livestock farms across seven European countries. (deposited 29 Sep 2020 08:54)
  • Animal welfare on organic mixed livestock farms across seven European countries. (deposited 16 Oct 2020 13:50) [Currently Displayed]