Welfare monitoring of end-of-lay hens at the slaughterhouse

An objective monitoring system is essential to properly evaluate the welfare of farm animals. Therefore, this research project aims to develop a ready-to-use welfare monitoring and benchmark system for Flemish end-of-lay hens at the level of the slaughterhouse. During the monitoring system’s developmental
process, data is not only collected at the slaughterhouse, but also on-farm, in order to investigate the evolution of the welfare indicators between production phases, and to relate indicators to a certain phase. This results in 7 consecutive questionnaires per flock: start and end of production, catching and loading,
during lairage, at dirty and clean zone of the slaughterhouse and finally the slaughterhouse documents. The questionnaires gather information about general production parameters and data from animal-based indicators, like feathering and keel bone damage, which are scored on a subset of animals (n=100). The questionnaires are filled digitally using a custom made mobile application and upon submission, a report is automatically generated. To date, 20 flocks were assessed both on-farm and at the slaughterhouse. From
23 additional flocks only slaughterhouse data were obtained, due to episodes of avian influenza during which farm visits were not allowed for sanitary reasons. Based on the obtained data, the final set of indicators which are feasible to assess at the slaughter line, are chosen and thresholds are set for each
welfare indicator. In the near future, the scoring system will be taught to slaughterhouse staff and the monitoring system will be implemented in the Flemish slaughterhouses. The scored flocks will be benchmarked against the threshold values and desired actions for the future can be identified. In this way,
we wish to obtain a stepwise improvement of the welfare of the Flemish laying hens.