About Welfare Assessment Technologies

Maintaining a high standard of animal welfare is essential wherever animals are managed.

The Animal Welfare Assessment Grid (AWAG) is a unique online tool created by Welfare Assessment Technologies that objectively assesses and monitors the welfare of animals. It evaluates four parameters (physical, behavioural, environmental, and procedural) across the five welfare domains, providing a mean score for each parameter and a cumulative welfare score (CWAS). This allows for tracking the lifetime experience of individuals or groups of animals, visually demonstrating their quality of life. The AWAG's unique feature is its ability to drill down and identify specific factors that positively or negatively affect welfare, assess the success of treatment or changes in management systems, and make focused interventions.

The AWAG has been developed and validated for use with a variety of species and types of animal use, including companion dogs, assistance dogs, racing greyhounds, captive wild animals in zoos, laboratory species, cattle and pigs. By working with an independent technology company that understands how data, systems, and processes can come together to deliver a strategy, we have solved the unique and complex problems of welfare assessment through the engineering of a technology-driven solution that integrates strategic thinking and hands-on action.

We are now aiming to collaborate with companies that are developing precision livestock technologies to integrate this data into the AWAG factors to be measured and used to demonstrate welfare impacts. Our vision is that the AWAG is used in any arena to provide indicators on how the well-being of animals can be improved and demonstrate to regulators that a proactive approach is being taken, resulting in the delivery of improved husbandry and care. Its use in generating big data on animal welfare could inform policymakers. The system has further potential for retailer use and to increase consumer understanding of animal welfare issues, which is very relevant to sustainability and regeneration issues.

For more info, videos, and background publications, see www.awag.org.uk.