Dam Otten Nina, Rousing Tine, Forkman Björn
Section for Animal Welfare and Disease Control, Department of Veterinary and Medical Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, 1870 Frederiksberg C, Denmark.
Epidemiology and Management, Department of Animal Sciences, Aarhus University, 8830 Tjele, Denmark.
Animals (Basel). 2017 Nov 15;7(11):85. doi: 10.3390/ani7110085.
The present study seeks to investigate the influence of expert affiliation in the weighing procedures within animal welfare assessments. Experts are often gathered with different backgrounds with differing approaches to animal welfare posing a potential pitfall if affiliation groups are not balanced in numbers of experts. At two time points (2012 and 2016), dairy cattle and swine experts from four different stakeholder groups, namely researchers (RES), production advisors (CONS), practicing veterinarians (VET) and animal welfare control officers (AWC) were asked to weigh eight different welfare criteria: and A total of 54 dairy cattle experts (RES = 15%, CONS = 22%, VET = 35%, AWC = 28%) and 34 swine experts (RES = 24%, CONS = 35%, AWC = 41%) participated. Between-and within-group differences in the prioritization of criteria were assessed. AWC cattle experts differed consistently from the other cattle expert groups but only significantly for the criteria ( = 0.04), and tendencies towards significance within the criteria ( = 0.06). No significant differences were found between expert groups among swine experts. Inter-expert differences were more pronounced for both species. The results highlight the challenges of using expert weightings in aggregated welfare assessment models, as the choice of expert affiliation may play a confounding role in the final aggregation due to different prioritization of criteria.
本研究旨在调查专家所属机构对动物福利评估中权衡程序的影响。专家们通常背景各异，对动物福利的处理方式也不同，如果各所属机构的专家数量不均衡，这可能会带来潜在问题。在两个时间点（2012年和2016年），来自四个不同利益相关者群体的奶牛和猪专家，即研究人员（RES）、生产顾问（CONS）、执业兽医（VET）和动物福利控制官员（AWC），被要求对八个不同的福利标准进行权衡： 。共有54名奶牛专家（RES = 15%，CONS = 22%，VET = 35%，AWC = 28%）和34名猪专家（RES = 24%，CONS = 35%，AWC = 41%）参与。评估了标准优先级在组间和组内的差异。AWC奶牛专家与其他奶牛专家群体始终存在差异，但仅在标准 上有显著差异（ = 0.04），在标准 内有接近显著的趋势（ = 0.06）。在猪专家群体中，各专家组之间未发现显著差异。两个物种的专家间差异更为明显。结果凸显了在综合福利评估模型中使用专家权重的挑战，因为由于标准优先级不同，专家所属机构的选择可能在最终综合中起混杂作用。
