Department of Veterinary Disease Biology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, 1870 Frederiksberg C, Denmark.
Department of Large Animal Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, 1870 Frederiksberg C, Denmark.
Poult Sci. 2017 Jul 1;96(7):2018-2028. doi: 10.3382/ps/pex024.
Danish legislation prescribes surveillance of footpad dermatitis (FPD) at slaughter as an indicator of on-farm broiler welfare. The 3-point scale being used was originally developed in Sweden to score feet from conventional broilers, but the extent and causes of misclassifications have not been investigated, neither in conventional nor organic broilers. Hence, we investigated the performance of the official Danish FPD scoring system in conventional and organic broilers by assessing agreement between official scores from the slaughterhouse and consecutive scoring of the same feet by a reference method. We also investigated the impact of performing an incision of the footpad during scoring. In total, 902 conventional and 897 organic broiler feet (∼100 per flock from 18 flocks) were collected at a large Danish slaughterhouse for the official FPD surveillance system. Laboratory scoring, according to predefined criteria for visual and invasive investigations of the feet derived from the official system, was compared to the official scores assigned at slaughter. Footpad lesions were primarily chronic, representing a wide range of severity. Marked differences in color, shape, and degree of papillary hypertrophy and hyperkeratosis of organic and conventional feet were observed. Low agreement primarily regarding score 2 lesions was observed when comparing official and reference foot scores in conventional (0.31) and organic (0.05) broilers. Variation in agreement when comparing flock scores suggested a non-systematic bias, which might be attributed to differences among official raters. The very low agreement in feet from organic broilers shows that these were more difficult to score than conventional. This might be due to a mismatch between lesion characteristics and scoring criteria, or because the lesions were less severe. Strictly visual examination detected 3 out of 4 score 2 lesions identified by the reference method. This study indicated that a large proportion of severe FPD lesions go unnoticed in the official Danish scoring system. The results further suggested that the complexity and impracticality of the scoring criteria impede uniform scoring among raters and production systems.
丹麦法规规定，在屠宰场监测脚垫皮炎（FPD）作为农场肉鸡福利的指标。目前使用的 3 分制评分系统最初是在瑞典开发的，用于对传统肉鸡的脚部进行评分，但尚未对传统肉鸡和有机肉鸡的分类错误程度和原因进行调查。因此，我们通过评估屠宰场官方评分与参考方法对同一脚部的连续评分之间的一致性，研究了官方丹麦 FPD 评分系统在传统和有机肉鸡中的表现。我们还研究了在评分过程中进行脚垫切开对评分的影响。我们在丹麦的一家大型屠宰场收集了 902 只传统肉鸡和 897 只有机肉鸡的脚部（每个鸡群约 100 只，来自 18 个鸡群），用于官方 FPD 监测系统。根据官方系统中源自视觉和侵入性脚部检查的预定标准进行实验室评分，并与屠宰时分配的官方评分进行比较。脚垫病变主要是慢性的，代表了广泛的严重程度。观察到有机和传统肉鸡的脚垫颜色、形状和乳头肥大及过度角化程度有明显差异。在传统肉鸡（0.31）和有机肉鸡（0.05）中，当比较官方和参考脚部评分时，观察到主要涉及 2 分病变的评分一致性低。在比较鸡群评分时，一致性的变化表明存在非系统性偏差，这可能归因于官方评分者之间的差异。有机肉鸡的脚部评分非常低，表明这些肉鸡的评分比传统肉鸡更难。这可能是由于病变特征与评分标准不匹配，或者是由于病变不太严重。严格的目视检查检测到参考方法确定的 4 个 2 分病变中的 3 个。本研究表明，在丹麦官方评分系统中，大量严重的 FPD 病变未被发现。研究结果进一步表明，评分标准的复杂性和不切实际性阻碍了评分者和生产系统之间的统一评分。
