The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) has developed six scientific, globally harmonized tools aimed at improving the welfare of six animals for human consumption: beef and dairy cattle, pigs, poultry for meat and for laying and farmed fish. These tools map the opportunities and obstacles in animal and aquaculture production chains, enabling animal and aquaculture producers to globally compare and improve animal welfare in their production chains.
The animal welfare scores are based on seven components: housing, handling and culling of animals, animal health and painful procedures and animal and health management. All actors in the production chain, including the farm, transport company and abattoir, can relatively easily measure and gather information on these ‘hotspots’ of animal welfare.