Nielsen Søren Saxmose, Denwood Matthew James, Forkman Björn, Houe Hans
Section for Animal Welfare and Disease Control, Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen, DK-1870 Frederiksberg C, Denmark.
Animals (Basel). 2017 Dec 6;7(12):94. doi: 10.3390/ani7120094.
National welfare indices of cattle and pigs are constructed in Denmark, and meat inspection data may be used to contribute to these. We select potentially welfare-relevant abattoir recordings and assess the sources of variation within these with a view towards inclusion in the indices. Meat inspection codes were pre-selected based on expert judgement of having potential animal welfare relevance. Random effects logistic regression was then used to determine the magnitude of variation derived at the level of the farm or abattoir, of which farm variation might be associated with welfare, whereas abattoir variation is most likely caused by differences in recording practices. Codes were excluded for use in the indices based on poor model fit or a large abattoir effect. There was a large abattoir effect for most of the codes modelled and these codes were deemed to be not appropriate to be carried forward to the welfare index. A few were found to be potentially useful for a welfare index: Eight for slaughter pigs, 15 for sows, five for cattle <18 months of age, and six for older cattle. The absolute accuracy of each code/combination could not be assessed, only the relative variation between farms and abattoirs.
丹麦构建了牛和猪的国家福利指数，肉类检验数据可用于为这些指数提供数据支持。我们选择了可能与福利相关的屠宰场记录，并评估了这些记录中的变异来源，以便纳入指数。肉类检验代码是根据专家判断预先选择的，这些代码具有潜在的动物福利相关性。然后使用随机效应逻辑回归来确定在农场或屠宰场层面产生的变异程度，其中农场变异可能与福利相关，而屠宰场变异很可能是由记录方式的差异引起的。基于模型拟合不佳或较大的屠宰场效应，一些代码被排除在指数使用范围之外。对于大多数建模的代码，存在较大的屠宰场效应，这些代码被认为不适用于福利指数。有少数代码被发现可能对福利指数有用：屠宰猪的有8个，母猪的有15个，18个月龄以下牛的有5个，成年牛的有6个。每个代码/组合的绝对准确性无法评估，只能评估农场和屠宰场之间的相对变异。
