Some abstracts do not have video files because ASAS was denied recording rights.
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The Common Swine Industry Audit: Future steps to assure positive on-farm animal welfare utilizing validated, repeatable and feasible animal-based measures
The Common Swine Industry Audit (CSIA) was developed in collaboration with pork producers, packers and processors to provide stakeholders with a consistent, reliable and verifiable system to assure on-farm swine welfare and food safety. This audit tool was built from the framework of Pork Quality Assurance®Plus program to develop a single, common audit platform for the U.S. Pork industry. The audit can be broken down into 27 key aspects that cover swine care, husbandry and pre-harvest food safety. Of these key areas, animal based measures represent approximately 50% of the total points achievable for the audit and encompass all critical criteria including willful acts of abuse and timely euthanasia. As this tool is designed to provide an objective, science-based platform to facilitate continuous improvement in animal care, the use of validated, repeatable and feasible animal-based measures is critical. Recognizing this, the CSIA task force and researchers within this field are focusing on the future needs and expectations of the audit by evaluating three questions. 1) How do we determine thresholds for animal based measures? Within the CSIA, each animal based measured has a threshold for what is considered acceptable or unacceptable. For example, farms will receive 10 points if 1% or less of the pigs observed have a body condition score of 1 or 0 points if prevalence is ≥ 2%. Although thresholds provide a more objective manner to validate welfare on farm, these thresholds may often be arbitrary and based more on experience than science. 2) How do we identify, interpret and provide value to animal based measures assessed in the audit? For any assessment and audit, the data we collect must directly relate back to the welfare status of the pigs on the farm. Identifying animal-based measures that cover a broad range of potential welfare problems to provide direct interpretation and value of individual pig welfare is critical. 3) What do these values mean to the US swine industry as a whole? As the goal of the audit it to provide useful feedback for continuous improvement on farm, we must as an industry be committed to utilizing the information attained through on-farm audits to develop the educational tools, resources and support to advance on-farm swine welfare.
Keywords: Audit, swine, welfare