Indikatoren für eine ergebnisorientierte Honorierung von Tierschutzleistungen in der Milchviehhaltung

Regulations in organic farming and in animal welfare policies are action-oriented: they refer to resources such as space allowance and management, i.e. access to pasture. With this approach, the prerequisites for the exercise of normal behaviour can be created; but direct impacts on animal health and welfare are largely left out. The aim of our project is to develop a concept for a result-oriented approach to improve animal welfare in the framework of organic farming and the EUs rural development programmes. One of the challenges is the selection of suitable indicators. To select indicators which address major welfare-problems in dairy farming, a two-phased sampling process was carried out. First, scientists from Germany, Switzerland and Austria (n = 20) were asked in a written survey to select the most appropriate from a list of 82 indicators derived from literature. The questionnaire was designed as a Delphi survey to reduce heterogeneity among researchers and resulted in a list of 23 indicators. Then a practitioner-workshop with farmers, lobby groups, administration and control took place (n = 20) to address practicability issues. With great match, a list of 10 indicators was adopted, which was subjected to a practical test on 119 dairy farms, in which the full Welfare Quality® protocol was carried out for validation and comparison. The presentation will suggest this set of indicators.