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Development of principles for animal health and welfare planning in organic dairy farms (WP2)
In the ANIPLAN project, we have developed a set of principles (see the Principle development paper) for the process of animal health and welfare planning. A health planning process should:
1) ... aim at continuous development including an evaluation of the current status, planning, actions and evaluation,
2) ... be farm specific
3) ... emphasise farmer ownership
4) ... involve external persons
5) ... include external knowledge
6) ... be based on an organic principle framework (system approach)
7) ... be written
8) ... acknowledge good aspects
Review of animal health planning principles
In UK, animal health planning is being increasingly promoted and implemented in both the organic and conventional livestock sectors – health planning is compulsory for organic certification in the UK. Other voluntary health planning exists in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany. At the moment very little is known as to how health and welfare plans are developed and how they are implemented at the farm level. Experiences in the UK are very valuable for developing animal health and welfare planning on a European wide basis. Our British partners from University of Wales have made a review of the use of Animal Health Plans In UK, which can be downloaded from here (it is also in our proceedings from our first project workshop in Hellevad as annex): Animal Health Plans in UK review . At our first project workshop, Chris Atkinson presented a paper regarding Animal health plans and Animal Health Planning. This paper is also in our proceedings, but can also be downloaded from here: Animal health plans and planning
During the project, we constantly evaluate our on-farm activities in relation to these principles for animal health and welfare planning.
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