WAIT4 annual meeting: assessing animal welfare in the face of agroecological transition challenges

Today, animal welfare assessment is based primarily on environmental indicators, which provide more information about good treatment (obligation of means) than about the welfare actually perceived by the animal. The WAIT4 project is changing this paradigm by placing the animal at the heart of the assessment.

The agenda for this annual meeting includes progress on the project's main scientific areas:

• AI characterisation of activities and social interactions that generate positive or negative emotions.
• Precise measurement of animal physiology to assess short- and medium-term adaptation to stress.
• Analysis of the effects of agroecological transition, particularly facilitative behaviours (practices that enable animals to overcome unavoidable stress), on animal welfare and health.

Innovative and concrete approaches:

• Behavioural phenotyping of goats using connected collars equipped with accelerometers.
• Development of recognition algorithms to analyse the posture of sows and social interactions with piglets or between piglets.
• Detection of lameness and identification of several indicators for real-time monitoring of cow welfare, particularly in the face of heat and water stress.

In a context of agroecological transition (new farming practices), climate change (heat waves, availability of food resources, particularly those provided by grasslands) and digital transformation (new real-time measurement capabilities), WAIT4 aims to identify robust indicators of animal welfare in a variety of environments.

Many thanks to all the partners and researchers involved. This work opens up major opportunities for reconciling performance, animal welfare and sustainability objectives in livestock farming systems.