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The effects of organic management on greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiency in livestock production
No full textThe process of researching animal health and welfare planning
No full text’Minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds through animal health and welfare planning’, ANIPLAN, is a CORE-Organic project which was initiated in June 2007. The main aim of the project is to investigate active and well planned animal health and welfare promotion and disease prevention as a means of minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds. This aim will be met through the development of animal health and welfare planning principles for organic dairy farms under diverse conditions based on an evaluation of current experiences. This also includes application of animal health and welfare assessment across Europe. In order to bring this into practice the project also aims at developing guidelines for communication about animal health and welfare promotion in different settings, for example, as part of existing animal health advisory services or farmer groups such as the Danish Stable School system and the Dutch network programme. The project is divided into the following five work packages, four of which comprise research activities with the other focused on coordination and knowledge transfer, through meetings, workshops and publications.
The content of this set of workshop proceedings reflects the fact that the workshop in Fokhol in Norway was held at a relatively early stage with regard to certain joint activities and methodological development. Training in animal welfare assessment had taken place for the first time in the project a couple of months previous to this workshop, and the results in terms of inter-observer reliability are presented by the organisers of this training workshop, Solveig March, Lisi Gratzer and Jan Brinkmann and their supervisor Christoph Winckler. This forms a good background for a reliable data collection in all countries. A presentation from a newly employed Ph.D. student linked to the ANIPLAN project, Lindsay Kay Whistance, gives insight into the study of defecation behaviour in dairy cattle. Although not directly part of the ANIPLAN studies, the presentation is particularly relevant to the considerations regarding animal welfare in housed and outdoor systems. Gidi Smolders from the Netherlands presented a paper about a Dutch farmer group initiative with a strong element of farmer ownership. Mette Vaarst contributes with a paper on farmer learning and empowerment in groups, with a background of Danish experiences with the so-called ‘Stable Schools’. Two papers by Roderick and Vaarst reflect the workshop discussions about research methodologies and the various contexts and conditions for farmer group work. These two papers demonstrate the complexity of the research requirements when conducting a trans-national and cross-disciplinary research project with many stakeholders
Improving organic animal farming for the future
No full textRecognising and promoting multi-levelled diversity on farms, between farms and across the world is a critical pre-condition for development of organic farming. To ensure that farming can continuously develop in diverse ways to meet the multiple needs and aims of current and future generations of humans, animals and ecosystems, we need institutional frameworks that build on a development agenda that incorporates issues such as resource allocation, knowledge transfer, public goods and research. The key four organic principles of fairness, care, health and ecology give us the necessary benchmark from which we can continue to characterise farms as organic. Although organic certification provides us with the critical guarantee, we also need to maintain sufficient pragmatism and flexibility to account for diversity and equality. The broad organic farming community should be inclusive of systems that aspire to meet the key organic principles, even though they may not qualify as being certifiably organic.
Animals on organic farms should be seen as complementary parts of the farm ecosystem rather than competitors. We have identified embedded integration as a key aspiration for all organic farms with animals, as this contributes to more efficient resource utilisation, dietary diversity and sustainable economies. However, regardless of the nature of the interactions, underpinning the thought processes should be the notion that farmed animals are sentient beings, and other non-farmed animals are also key contributors to the key ecological processes. A part of embracing sentience should be appreciating animals’ opportunity for natural behaviour which in turn requires us to broaden our view of the health of animals to that of their resilience. By recognising and promoting resilience, we can create systems that allow animals to deal effectively with their surroundings and to have positive experiences, as well as being free from disease. The organic farming systems that we create and develop when we recognise and promote resilience, integration and diversity requires shared knowledge, skills and experience. In this respect, creating the right environment and emphasis on communication between farmers, between farmers and advisors, and at another level, communication between humans and animals, becomes particularly important
Implementation of farmer groups for animal health and welfare planning considering different contexts
No full textThis paper reflects some of the discussions that took place during the ANIPLAN workshop where participants discussed the special farming and farmer characteristics, needs and conditions in their own country in relation to farmer discussion groups, as well as more generic issues to consider when taking a farmer group approach to animal health and welfare planning.
Farmer discussion groups are not unique, and there are examples of different approaches to, and aims of, farmer groups worldwide. Perhaps an important starting point when analysing the successes and characteristics of these groups is to consider their original purpose. The starting point of the discussion in the ANIPLAN project has been the so-called Danish Stable Schools (Vaarst et al., 2007; Vaarst et al. 2008; mentioned in Vaarst ibid.), as well as existing approaches within the other participating countries, such as the Dutch Caring Dairy groups (Smolders, ibid.). A major feature of the Danish Stable Schools has been the time limited intensive working towards a common goal based around equal participation within the group. This is quite a different approach to other examples, such as the so-called ‘erfa-groups’ in Denmark (‘erfa’ as an abbreviation of ‘erfaring’, which in Danish means ‘experience’) that have worked for decades on dissemination of new knowledge and ideas to and among farmers, focusing on separate themes at each meeting, such as approaches to parasite control, winter feeding strategies, or the use of body condition scores. Similar focused dissemination programmes exist in many countries. What characterises the ANIPLAN project is that the focus is on a rather more systematic animal health and welfare planning process which is meant to be continuous at the farm level
The ANIPLAN project: Reflections on the research approaches, methods and challenges
No full textThe objective of the ANIPLAN project is to ‘investigate active and well planned animal health and welfare promotion and disease prevention as a means of minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds’. The basic idea lying behind this objective is that the active development of plans at the farm level to improve herd health and welfare will enable individual farmers to practically achieve the organic principles with regard to the health and well-being of organically-farmed animals.
To fulfil the objective, the project needs to be carried out in close collaboration with farmers and conducted in real farm situations. This means that the research is being carried out in an environment which is not under control the control of researchers. This, in turn means that there are inevitable methodological issues which will arise during the course of the study. This paper describes some of the issues arising during the first part of the study i.e the setting up of the project and the first year of data collection.
One major challenge for the research team involved in this project is to identify research methods which can describe and document the planning process as well as the disease, production and medicine use on study farms. This documentation will enable the researchers as well as the end-users of the research to evaluate the approach and the effect of animal health and welfare planning on herds. This includes the process of animal health and welfare planning, which can be regarded as an iterative social and individual human development process. The transformative learning process (Vaarst, ibid.) leading to a change of perceptions and priorities of those involved should be expected before actual changes are implemented in the herds. Again, there are methodological issues to consider in this respect
Planning for better animal health and welfare, Report from the 1st ANIPLAN project workshop, Hellevad, October 2007
No full text’Minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds through animal health and welfare planning’, ANIPLAN, is a CORE-Organic project which was initiated in June 2007. The main aim of the project is to investigate active and well planned animal health and welfare promotion and disease prevention as a means of minimising medicine use in organic dairy herds. This aim will be met through the development of animal health and welfare planning principles for organic dairy farms under diverse conditions based on an evaluation of current experiences. This also includes application of animal health and welfare assessment across Europe. In order to bring this into practice the project also aims at developing guidelines for communication about animal health and welfare promotion in different settings, for example, as part of existing animal health advisory services or farmer groups such as the Danish Stable School system and the Dutch network programme. The project is divided into the following five work packages, four of which comprise research activities with the other focused on coordination and knowledge transfer, through meetings, workshops and publications. These proceedings represent our first results in terms of presented papers and discussions at our first project workshop in Hellevad Vandmølle as well as a review of Animal Health Planning in UK.
The content of the workshop proceedings reflect the aim and starting points of all work packages, both in terms of analyses prior to the workshop, and developments during the workshop emanating from group work. Besides a general introduction to the project and the ideas of the project, Christoph Winckler provides an overview of the use of animal based parameters based on the results of the WelfareQuality project. Christopher Atkinson and Madeleine Neale presented concepts, principles and the practicalities of Animal Health Planning and Animal Health Plans based on UK experiences. Pip Nicholas from The University of Wales, Aberystwyth produced a report reviewing the current use of animal health and welfare planning. The entire document is included in these workshop proceedings. This was supplemented through presentations from all countries regarding animal health and welfare planning processes and research. These are summarised together with the concepts developed through dialogue at the workshop in the paper by Nicholas, Vaarst and Roderick. Finally, the Danish Stable School principles were presented by Mette Vaarst followed by discussion on different approaches of communication in farmer groups and at the individual level between farmers and advisors.
One important outcome from this workshop is a set of preliminary principles for a good health planning process. We concluded through group discussions followed by a plenary session that a health planning process should aim at continuous development and improvement, and should incorporate health promotion and disease handling, based on a strategy where the current situation is evaluated and form basis for action, which is then reviewed in a new evaluation. It is important that any health plan is farm specific and based on farmer ownership, although an external person(s) should be involved, as well as external knowledge. The organic principles should form the framework for any action (meaning that a systems approach is needed), and the plan should be written. The good and positive aspects on each farm – things that other farmers potentially can learn from. The work and studies in dairy farms within the project will be based on these principles and comprise evaluation and review using animal based parameters as well as finding ways of communication with farmers about animal health and welfare
Recent Decisions
No full textComments on recent decisions by William J. Gerardo, Thomas M. Clusserath, Roderick A. Mette, John J. Coffey, Paul J. Schierl, Gerald M. Gallivan, Lawrence James Bradley, and Thomas A. McNish
Recent Decisions
No full textComments on recent decisions by William J. Gerardo, Thomas M. Clusserath, Roderick A. Mette, John J. Coffey, Paul J. Schierl, Gerald M. Gallivan, Lawrence James Bradley, and Thomas A. McNish
Recent Decisions
No full textComments on recent decisions by William J. Gerardo, Thomas M. Clusserath, Roderick A. Mette, John J. Coffey, Paul J. Schierl, Gerald M. Gallivan, Lawrence James Bradley, and Thomas A. McNish
Learning and empowerment in farmer groups as one way of creating a healthy process of animal health and welfare planning
No full textAn animal health and welfare plan is a useful document as a tool for improving the farm in ways which will lead to improvements in the herd. Atkinson & Neale (2008) distinguished between ‘animal health plan’ and ‘animal health planning’, where the first was the document, and the latter was the necessary process leading to formulating a plan. This means that the document becomes useful because it is a result of an active planning process, which involves a systematic analysis of the situation and a reflective process where the people, who are actually responsible for changes in the farm, are actively participating in the analysis of the situation and articulating their perceptions and planned actions. This process can be carried through in very many ways in practice, although based around some overall principles which ensure that there is room to carry through the process
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