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The Welfare Quality® Assessment Protocols for cattle (sans veal), poultry and pigs are now available for downloading in PDF format.
The calculation of Welfare Quality scores often use a spline function. Since the Assessment Protocols were first published it has come to our attention that the parameters of those functions were not provided with enough details. This has been corrected in the protocols for cattle. For those of you who want to calculate scores for pig and poultry, please use the parameters presented in the Excel file 'Spline Functions' and described in the Word document 'Upgraded Spline Functions'. Alternatively, you may use our web service WAFA to calculate scores.
The Welfare Quality® Assessment Protocols were designed in such a way that they could be modified and upgraded in response to developments in technical and scientific knowledge. Any scientist can contribute to improvements in the Assessment Protocols by proposing measures for Welfare Quality® criteria that present a better compromise between validity and feasibility. Each proposal will be reviewed by the Welfare Quality Network Working Group for upgrading protocols. Please feel free to make any constructive proposal and post it on the website, using this pre-designed template.
Qualifications
To ensure continuation of the high standards set by the Welfare Quality Network an examination process has been developed in order to determine and certify the competency of candidates wishing to effectively assess animal welfare according to the requirements of the Welfare Quality® protocols. The process is described in the PDF document Qualifications.
Cattle assesment