Brooke, the international working horse and
donkey charity, has unveiled an online collection of animal welfare indicators.
Their website explains: “Animal welfare indicators are scientific, non-invasive measurements of aspects that contribute to an animal’s overall welfare state, which help us to understand welfare from the animal’s perspective and include physical measures such as nasal discharge or body lesions, and behavioural measures, such as the animal’s response to contact or general attitude.”
Brooke introduced their first Working Equine Welfare Assessment protocol in 2003. Since then, they have refined how they assess animal welfare in the field. In 2011, this resulted in them launching their Standardised Equine-Based Welfare Assessment Tool (SEBWAT), which is still widely used in their international country programmes with working equids.
Ashleigh Brown, global animal welfare advisor at Brooke, said: “Brooke benefits from many years of experience in assessing animal welfare in the field, in numerous countries around the world. We are excited to be able to share our resources and our learning to support others with their efforts to measure and improve animal welfare.”
Brooke hopes that the welfare indicators will be useful for scientists assessing welfare within a research context, animal health practitioners and veterinarians treating equids, and students of animal welfare assessment, equine science or animal welfare science. The tools may also be used to monitor the impact of welfare related regulation and provide welfare data in support of animal advocacy and welfare campaigns.
For more information and to access the repository, visit the Brooke website:
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