• Livestock

Internal audits regarding on-farm emergency killing

The BroilerNet project involves a bottom-up approach to identify challenges and innovation needs for broiler farmers in Europe and to collect promising and already successfully implemented Good Practices to meet the challenges in question. The top Good Practices selected by experts within the three thematic areas (animal health management, animal welfare, and sustainability) have been summarized in factsheets. On-farm emergency killing is of utmost importance on welfare grounds since it avoids prolonged pain and suffering of unfit animals (e.g., sick, cachectic, physically injured). Spanish farmers are all trained on animal welfare by law. Part of the training also addresses the authorised methods of emergency killing and the importance of humanely ending the life of unfit animals. However, training certifications per se do not guarantee that the farmers put it into practice on a regular basis. For this reason, the integrator company performs unannounced internal audits on the farms to verify whether the farmers are actually performing emergency killing of unfit animals. This practice has been in place for 2-3 years and is carried out by the farm veterinarians or other technical staff. The integrator carries out these audits as an additional tool to protect the welfare of broiler chickens on farms.