Document type: scientific review published in Poultry
Authors: Hettmannsperger, M.A., Ruhnke, I.
Preview:
Within the framework of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the Ministry of Agriculture, Agri-food and Food Sovereignty (MAAFS) commissioned an evaluation of the impact of the CAP Strategic Plan (CSP) on animal welfare in France [...] This evaluation was conducted from a thematic perspective focusing on animal welfare and covers the years 2023 and 2024, corresponding to the first two effective years of programme implementation. The evaluation work makes it possible to analyse the contribution of CAP interventions to animal welfare, as well as their coherence and complementarity with other relevant measures. The evaluation was carried out over a 12-month period (January 2025-January 2026) and structured into three phases: the scoping phase (January-March 2025), the data collection and analysis phase (April-September 2025), and the finalisation and recommendations phase (October 2025-January 2026). [...] The manual handling of poultry is an essential part of raising and caring for birds. The different manual catching methods have various impacts on the bird’s welfare and health, the well-being and work satisfaction of the people who are handling the birds, and the economic and logistical requirements of everyone involved. The traditional approach of using the Five Freedoms for investigating animal well-being has been amended with animal-based measures (ABMs) as well as the evaluation of five welfare domains, which consider the subjective response of an animal towards its environment. The assessment of single individual animal welfare parameters without context can be non-specific, only partially informative, or even misleading when considered in isolation. The objective measurement of suitable parameters for the evaluation of the various steps of poultry catching and transport is complex and should be carried out in a differentiated manner. This review summarizes the current knowledge about the manual catching of poultry, with special focus on the upright and inverted handling of chicken and current considerations in Europe. The implementation of consistent, transparent, and traceable central data collection on animal health and welfare at various critical control points of bird transportation would allow systematic evaluation of the multifactorial welfare assessment in the future.
