The Welfare Aggregation and Guidance (WAG) Tool: A New Method to Summarize Global Welfare Assessment Data for Equids.

ABSTRACT: Animal welfare can be represented by an array of indicators. There is, however, increasing demand for concise welfare assessments that can be easily communicated and compared. Previous methods to aggregate welfare assessments have focused on livestock systems and produced a single welfare score, which may not represent all aspects of welfare. We propose an aggregation method for the recently developed Equid Assessment Research and Scoping (EARS) welfare assessment tool that results in grades for five welfare categories: housing conditions, working conditions, health, nutrition, and behavior. We overcome the problems associated with existing approaches by using a single aggregation method (decision trees) that incorporates the most important welfare indicators in a single step. The process

SUBMITTER: Kubasiewicz LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7222376 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature