Development of a decision support system for assessing farm animal welfarein relation to husbandry systems: Strategy and prototype

Due to increasing empirical information on farm animal welfare since the 19 60s, the prospects for sound decisionmaking concerning welfare have improve d. This paper describes a strategy to develop a decision-making aid, a deci sion support system, for assessment of farm-animal welfare based on availab le scientific knowledge. Such a decision support system allows many factors to be taken into account. It is to be developed according to the Evolution ary Prototyping Method, in which an initial prototype is improved in reiter ative updating cycles. This initial prototype has been constructed. It uses hierarchical representations to analyse scientific statements and statemen ts describing the housing system. Welfare is assessed from what is known ab out the biological needs of the animals, using a welfare model in the form of a tree that contains these needs as welfare components. Each state of ne ed is assessed using welfare relevant attributes of the housing system and weighting factors. Attributes are measurable properties of the housing syst em. Weighting factors are assigned according to heuristic rules based on th e principle of weighting all components (attributes and needs) equally, unl ess there are strong reasons to do otherwise. Preliminary tests of the prot otype indicate that it may be possible to perform assessment of farm-animal welfare in an explicit way and based on empirical findings. The procedure needs to be refined, but its prospects are promising.