Towards an Animal Welfare Impact Category: Weighting Indicators in Pig Farming

The understanding of sustainability is shifting from that of a purely environmental dimension to one that includes social concerns. Combined with the growing customer interest in livestock husbandry practices, this study investigates the assessment of animal welfare as a socially influenced impact category for the life cycle assessment (LCA) of pig farming. The weighting of animal welfare impacts is based on a quantitative approach using a set of indicators derived from an expert survey using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The aim is to develop an easy-to-implement score that translates the characteristics of several animal welfare indicators into a comparable value. To demonstrate the feasibility of the weighting part of the framework, a case study is conducted with nine experts in the fields of animal husbandry, agricultural sciences, and veterinary medicine. The case study results show that the main criteria of single animal observation and feed intake are the most relevant factors, at 30.6%, followed by operation-specific parameters at 23.9% and husbandry conditions at 14.9%. This case study highlights that animal losses (13.9%) significantly influence the impact category, while access to outdoor areas (1.4%) is less important. The overall conclusion is that an animal health-centered approach is preferable when assessing animal welfare.