Co-designed Welfare Monitoring Platform for Pig and Dairy Cattle

Animal welfare has become a fundamental aspect of livestock production. Current animal welfare assessment tools usually rely on momentary recordings and on awkward integration of various indicators with different units. Besides, existing tools to assess farm animal welfare are time consuming and costly. Precision livestock farming (PLF)-technology allows to monitor and optimise farming processes. PLF systems generate large volumes of on-farm data that can be used to monitor welfare in pigs and dairy cattle. ClearFarm proposes to use PLF technology and integration of animal-based data, based on a blockchain approach, to enable improved animal welfare across the entire production chain. This will contribute to improved sustainable pig and dairy cattle production, the two livestock production systems with the highest shares in Europe. ClearFarm aims to co-design, develop and validate a software platform powered by an algorithm integrating PLF data to provide animal welfare information, as well as other environmental and economic sustainability information that will assist (i) production chain stakeholders and (ii) consumers on decision making within the pig and dairy cattle value chains. Regulators, consumers and producers, policy makers, among other stakeholders, will get involved in the design of the new solution, seeking thus a multi-actor approach in most of the stages of the project. The software platform will be capable to inform the welfare status in a variety of production systems, considering geographical divergences within production systems in Europe. The outcome of the algorithm will feed a user-friendly platform that will be adapted to inform the different targeted audiences. ClearFarm will assist producers in optimizing production process, but also for consumers to have more insight into the background of animal products, providing thus a better understanding of animal welfare.