ANIHWAcall3. Validation of automated welfare assessment for poultry

The welfare of food animals is a high priority for European consumers who increasingly see high welfare as an essential part of sustainable, healthy food production. Animal welfare can potentially be greatly enhanced by using technology capable of giving continuous information about the health and welfare of the animals concerned, but so far poultry production has lagged behind the rest of the agricultural sector and still lacks widely available automated ways of assessing animal welfare. In commercial broiler (meat) chicken houses, group sizes are so large (flocks of up to 50,000 are common in Europe) and the margins on each bird so low that it is not feasible to assess the welfare of each animal individually as is possible with cows or pigs, so a different approach to automated welfare assessment is needed.
One promising method of automatically assessing the welfare of poultry that has already achieved initial validation on commercial farms involves using the pattern of 'optical flow' created by the natural movements of chicken flocks as they move around house. The initial validation has shown that optical flow can predict key welfare outcomes in broiler chickens days and even weeks in advance of other types of measurements. It can even distinguish which flocks are at risk from subsequently testing positive for Campylobacter. The system could potentially have worldwide impact if taken up and used as a standard welfare assessment tool for poultry. However, if the system is to realise its full potential for measuring and improving poetry welfare, it needs to be subject to a second stage of validation. That is the aim of this project.
The project will do this (i) by testing the optical flow system on a wide range of farms and conditions across Europe (Switzerland, France and the UK) and then (ii) by comparing it with other already recognised but labour-intensive methods for assessing welfare at flock level, such as 'gait scoring'. (iii) An important component of the project will be to relating the welfare of birds measured at the individual level to optical flow and other measures at flock level. Since 'good' or 'bad' welfare is experienced by individuals not groups we need to establish how well optical flow reflects individual bird welfare. This will be done by applying a range of behavioural tests to individual birds, looking at their physical health and then seeing how well these are correlated with whole flock behaviour. (iv) We will relate optical flow to infection by key diseases such as Campylobacter and Salmonella, both of which impact gut health and are of great concern to the poultry industry. (v) Finally,using the information collected, a database will be set up so that optical flow data can be seen and evaluated in the context of production, health, management and other flock attributes with the aim of establishing 'norms' for good flock welfare.
The project consortium consists of teams from the UK, France, Switzerland and the Czech Republic and includes experts on behaviour, welfare, stress physiology, poultry health. immunology as well as specialists in Salmonella infection, genotyping of Campylobacter and DNA technology for analysing gut microbiota and health. Although diverse in their individual interests, the members of the consortium are united in their determination to improve poetry health and welfare by careful and validated use of technology.

The technical objectives of the project as a whole are set out in the full ANIHWA proposal (attached)
The UK contribution will be

1. To collect optical flow, health, welfare, management and production data, including samples for microbiological analysis, from commercial broiler farms in the UK and to be responsible for running equipment on Swiss and French, 25 farms. Optical flow data will be obtained via an existing camera/computer system already developed in Oxford. Behaviour, health and gait scores will be collected in a standard form. Data on water use, % mortality weight gain, and production data specially hockburn and pododermatitis will be obtained from the production companies.

2. To construct a database of all data collected from different farms across Europe with a view to developing flock 'norms' for healthy high welfare flocks and criteria for flocks that depart from this norm and to being able to relate welfare and disease to gut health. It will include existing measures used by producers for flock management such as water use and growth rate. the aim will be to develop means of identifying 'norms' for against which good welfare can be assessed.

3. Individual partners will be responsible for the initial microbiological screening of the samples they collect. Sub-sampls will be selected for further molecular analysis such as qPCR,analysis of genetic diversity at a single hypervariable focus (e.g. Por A gene in Campylobacter) and 16S microbiome analysis of all species in the gut.

The aim of the project is to produce a flock management tool that will be of direct use to farmers, veterinarians and researchers. It will enable producer companies to set standards of health and welfare within their companies and to put 'early warning' systems in place for their flocks. These will in turn allow them to demonstrate to their customers (such as supermarkets, food outlets and the general public) that health and welfare are priorities for them in poultry production. The benefits to the end users (farmers) will be partly directly financial (better flock management leading to lower mortality, less waster and more efficient production) and party due to more intangible reputational advantages such as the public image benefits of reducing antibiotics and being seen to achieve higher standards of animal welfare.
Since much of the work will be carried out on commercial farms in France, Switzerland and the UK, the work will involve close collaboration with commercial broiler producers who will thus learn from direct experience what the system is capable of doing and what benefits it brings to their own workforce.This will be our 'front line publicity and, initially, our main way of having an impact on end-users. the highly structured nature of the poetry industry (only a relatively small number of companies are responsible for a large proportion of chicken production) means that dissemination of the results through the industry can be quickly accomplished through contact with a few key players. A key part of our impact plan is to keep the companies we work with fully informed and up to date with what we are doing as they are the ones we need to influence.
To widen the impact of our work still further, we will attend international trade fairs which enable us to make contact with commercial representatives across Europe and the wider world. For dissemination to more academic audiences, we will attend national and international conferences on behaviour, poetry health, animal welfare band environmental microbiology.
As the work has broad implications in multiple areas and will interest researchers in diverse fields. We will therefore publish the results in a wide range of journals including journals on applied behaviour, foodbourne human diseases and gut microbiology. In view of the public interest in improving animal welfare, we will also publish in journals that are accessible to the genial public, to legislators and policy makers.