Content Analysis and Evaluation of Animal Welfare Regulations in the Sheep Trade : A Comparison of Sweden, Ireland and New Zealand

Sammanfattning

Regulatory systems aim translate animals’ biological and behavioural needs into practical requirements to obtain welfare in production systems. The requirements can provide insight into how animal welfare science is interpreted, reflected and implemented in different regulatory systems. Sheep husbandry was selected as a case study to examine alignment and deviations between Sweden and two major exporting countries, Ireland and New Zealand with the frameworks of Welfare Quality® principles and animal-based and non-animal-based welfare indicators. The included material has consisted of legislation, regulations and certifications schemes in respective country. In the comparison Sweden’s requirements placed the stronger emphasis on housing conditions while New Zealand and Ireland focused more on handling obligations. Resource-based measures dominated within the Good housing principle, while animal- and management-based measures occurred more frequently within Good health and Appropriate behaviour. Good feeding integrated all three measure types. The certification schemes generally contained more detailed and specific welfare measures, whereas legislation and regulations more commonly combined multiple welfare criterions within the same requirement. The findings highlight differences in how welfare requirements are structured and prioritised across the three regulatory systems, which may complicate direct comparison. However, the study’s result indicated a universal understanding of the importance of the actual on-farm practices for achieving animal welfare as the management-based measure was the most accounted for in total.