Monitoring animal welfare standards

The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH, founded as OIE) develops international standards for animal welfare to support Members improve how they handle terrestrial and aquatic animals on farm, during transport, slaughter, killing for disease control purposes, as well as in research and for specific topics such as stray dog management. Monitoring animal welfare standards can bring valuable insights for both WOAH and WOAH Members.

Monitoring animal welfare standards

Through its Annual Report, the Observatory presents a global overview of the level of uptake of these standards that relate to animal welfare.

How can you access our animal welfare analysis? 

The animal welfare dashboard presents the results of the analysis in an interactive way. 

To discover the results of our animal welfare analysis, access the full report as well as the one-page executive summary.  

  • Implementation of WOAH standards: the Observatory Annual Report
    Observatory Annual Report |
    First Edition, 2022
  • Monitoring animal welfare standards
    Observatory Annual Report 2022 |
    Executive summary
Download full Report Download executive summary

How did we monitor the implementation of animal welfare standards? 

Monitoring the implementation of standards related to animal welfare requires building and analysing indicators using various data sources.  

What animal welfare indicators did we use to monitor the implementation of these standards?  

Several indicators made it possible to monitor the implementation of standards related to animal welfare, among them:  

Indicators related to animal welfare in general: 

Performance of Veterinary Services regarding animal welfare, as assessed by the PVS Tool: Percentage of Members that have been assessed with a Level of Advancement of 3 or more for the Critical Competency II-13 related to animal welfare 
Number of Members that have passed animal welfare related legislation on slaughter, transport, stray dogs and research   

Indicators specifically related to dog population control programmes:  

Percentage of Members that estimate the number of owned dogs 
Percentage of Members that estimate the number of stray dogs 
Percentage of Members with a dog population control programme  
Percentage of Members that monitor and evaluate their dog population control programme  
Percentage of Members with legislation on dog population control   
Percentage of Members that apply control measures related to dog population control 

What data sources did we use to build animal welfare indicators?  

Three main data sources made it possible to build the monitoring indicators:  

Performance of Veterinary Services on animal welfare: PVS dataset, as compiled and provided by the WOAH Capacity Building Department (2016-2021)  
Legislation on animal welfare: data extracted from FAOLEX database (1995-2022) 
Data related to dog population control: data extracted from surveys on stray dog population carried out in a selection of Members by the WOAH Regional Representation in Europe (2015-2020) 

More on the topic

  • Observatory

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  • Animal Welfare

    Animal welfare is a complex and multi-faceted subject with scientific, ethical, economic, cultural, social, religious and political dimensions. It is attracting growing interest from civil society and is one of the priorities of the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).
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