Practical Application of the Five Domains Animal Welfare Framework for Supply Food Animal Chain Managers
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Overall, a well-argued piece detailing how the Five Domains Animal Welfare Framework could be incorporated into farm animal welfare assessments. My recommendation is to accept this paper after minor revisions. The vast majority of my feedback relates to typos and style rather than content, which I have detailed below. In two places I have made suggestions for figures that might help the reader visualise the point made, and have likewise suggested a table listing places that the reader could access relevant sources (on body condition scoring and lameness scoring) – information that might be kinder in the eye in a table rather than the main text.
No line numbers. I’ve noted some places missing punctuation, but I’d advise a general sweep for other typos to catch the ones I’ve missed. This is very clearly written, but there are places where two (or more) sentences could be combined to improve the flow of the paper (some noted below; again, I’d recommend a sweep to catch further examples)
Abstract:
Line 5 of the abstract there’s a typo (misplaced comma: “… great improvements,. “
“A farm that supplies a buyer must also comply with housing specifications. The farm either has the specified housing or does not have it” I’m not quite following these statements. If a farm does not meet the (legal) minimum required housing conditions, then presumably their products would never get as far as a buyer? Think these sentences need a tweak for clarity
Final sentence of the abstract. “The Five Domains Framework can also be used in a program for continuous improvement.” Improvement of what?
Section 1, top of page 2. How about a figure illustrating where the Five Domains and Welfare Quality are similar, and where they disagree? That would be helpful for your readers who are not farm animal specialists (like me)
Section 2.
Halfway down first paragraph: “This is a very short period of training…” Incredibly short! And do they have to pass an exam at the end, have to have regular top-up training sessions, or similar?
Suggest to add ‘also’ to the following sentence to help link it to the rest of the paragraph: “Many corporations ALSO have advisory boards or welfare officers that have advanced degrees”
Final sentence of first paragraph should ‘insure’ be ‘ensure’?
Final sentence of third paragraph: this could easily be combined with the previous sentence to improve the flow “This will not be effective in a commercial system – there are too many different ways that it can be interpreted.”
Section 2.2 Some formatting errors (?) with very short sentences spread over paragraphs, rather than being all in one paragraph (perhaps as a list?). Also missing some punctuation (full stops)
Section 2.3. Final third of the paragraph: another example of two sentences that could be combined to improve flow: “ Two of the them are food pad lesions and hock burn, associated with poor housing, which can easily be measured at slaughter.”
Section 2.5. first third of the paragraph has an in-text citation in (24) rather than [24].
Scoring system: I’m not quite following this. Do you mean that rather than calculating a single score describing welfare which, as you point out, might hide serious welfare problems, there should be several additional scores provided for specific welfare indicators (e.g., lameness)? Or that being given one high automatic fail score for a single indicator (e.g., lameness) would give a poor welfare score, even if the farm scored really well across all other measures? Needs a little more explanation, please (might a figure help readers visualise what you mean?)
Section 2.6, final paragraph: Are you saying here that using an indirect measure of inappropriate housing (lameness and swollen hocks) is a better way of assessing poor housing conditions than looking at the housing itself? Paragraph needs a bit more information, please.
3.1.1. Section title starts with a misplaced full stop. For readability, how about amending these titles slightly, e.g., The First Domain: Nutrition, or The First Domain “Nutrition”
Surely ensuring animals have enough to eat (as assessed via body condition scoring) is essential for any species? So why pick these two? Makes it sound like it’s only important for beef cattle on arid pastures and breeding sows…. This section in particular has lots of short sentences that don’t flow very well right now.
Page 5 second paragraph, halfway down. “Both the supply chain managers and the auditors need clear guidance on types of housing systems that are not allowed. It is important to avoid being too prescriptive on housing design, because producers need to have the freedom to innovate”. Repetitive of previous section (2.4).
Page 5, third paragraph. Again, this paragraph needs some work to link the sentences together better to improve the flow (many of them could be combined).
Page 5, third paragraph. Final sentence: is a reference missing to support the statement?
Section 3.1.3, first paragraph: might a table detailing places one could find resources on lameness scoring for different species, be a better way to summarise that information? (The previously mentioned resources regarding body condition scoring systems could go into it too).
Section 3.1.3, second paragraph. The first three sentences could be combined, and overall shortened “Any condition that cause pain is included in the Health Domain [1,2], e.g., broken bones… dehorning and castration…”
Section 3.1.3 final sentence: “ Most of the measures which are currently being used to assess welfare in commercial supply chains are used to prevent suffering” Versus what? I think you’re getting at the lack of available measures to describe positive welfare experiences – is that right? If so, the sentence needs rounding off to give more context.
Section 4. first paragraph, halfway down: apostrophe in the wrong place “…late 90’s” should be “’… late ‘90s”
As your paper is on how the Five Domains Animal Welfare Framework could be applied, how about a worked example of how it could be used? Either a welfare assessment form that an auditor might use and/or an example of a resulting welfare assessment report a supply chain manager might receive? I think that would help illustrate the benefits of the points you raise.
Author Response
I have done major revisions on my manuscript ID animals 1907202 – Practical Applications of the Five Domains Animal Welfare Framework for Supply Chain Managers.
Responses to Reviewer 1 –
I addressed a major concern of Reviewer 1 and added Tables to provide a list of references for sources for lameness scoring, body condition scoring and assessment of other important key welfare indicators. An explanation was also added to explain the differences between the Five Domains and Welfare Quality. Reviewer 1’s helpful comments have enabled me to greatly improve my manuscript. Corrections have been made in the entire paper to improve the flow of sentences.
Abstract – The misplaced comma has been corrected. A statement was added to explain that a farm that did not comply with the housing specifications would be removed from the approved supplier list. In the last line of the abstract, the words “of animal welfare” were added to make it clear that the statement about continuous improvement applied to welfare.
Section 1 – A short paragraph was added to explain the differences between The Five Domains and Welfare Quality.
Section 2 – A sentence was added to explain that an auditor is required to pass an exam and attend webinars and meetings for continuing education.
Section 2.2 – Added a short introduction paragraph about the acts.
Section 2.3 – Combined the two sentences.
Section 2.5 – Removed the parenthesis and replaced it with brackets. Further information was added to explain how the high lameness score could become concealed in the overall good animal welfare score.
Section 2.6 – Provided additional information to explain why I put a major emphasis on the outcome based measures such as swollen hocks. A resource based requirement that works well in Europe may be less applicable in a world-wide supply chain where many different types of housing are used.
Section 3.1.1 – I corrected the titles and improved the flow of the sentences. Added that body condition scoring is important for all farm animals. After the word sows, “ewes and all farm animals” was added.
Page 5 – This paragraph was left the same. Supply managers sometimes need important principles repeated. Many of the sentences have been rewritten and revised. A reference was added about the dairy cow’s positive reaction to the motorized grooming brush.
Section 3.1.3 – Five Tables have been added with references to sources for scoring lameness, body condition injuries, swollen hocks, feather condition in poultry and many other scoring tools. In the second paragraph, the first three sentences have been combined. At the end of Section 3.1.3, I added a sentence that states that most of the current scoring tools assess conditions that cause pain or discomfort. There is a need for easy-to-use tools to assess positive emotions.
Section 4 – The 90’s was changed to 90s.
Final Statement – Providing an example of an actual audit form is beyond the scope of this paper. The new tables make it very clear, the key welfare indicators that should be in an audit. The references in the tables refer to many pictorial scoring tools that will be easy for auditors to use.
Sincerely,
Temple Grandin
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear author,
This commentary is focused on the gap between the commercial practical application of the Five Domains used by supply chain managers and the assessment tools used in scientific research, as well as how to simplify the application of the currently used assessments. I guess there are several simple easy-to-use guidelines for this purpose in many European countries, such as France and Netherlands, and these guidelines could be a good reference to support your work. However, I recommend to re-write this manuscript carefully and providing it with recent scientific references. Additionally, I suggest dividing the assessment tools of each animal species into subtitles (sections) and avoiding the generalization that can distract the reader.
Specific comments:
“2.2. Acts of Abuse or Neglect – Automatic Failure”: Avoid writing a small paragraph that just composes of one or two sentences.
“2.4. Animal Housing Specifications”: Too short. Try to support this subtitle with more details.
“3.1.1. . First Domain Nutrition”: Please, remove the point before “First”.
“I have been a welfare auditor for many years and I have observed many falsified records”: Is it a unique case or it was repeated?
“I have worked .. , I have observed .. , I have learned .. , I have visited .. ”: Avoid personalization.
Author Response
Responses to Reviewer 2 -
I have done major revisions on my manuscript ID animals 1907202 – Practical Applications of the Five Domains Animal Welfare Framework for Supply Chain Managers.
Additional references and text have been added to include some of the new European welfare assessments. Welfare Quality is a European system and the word European is now used to describe it. I also added two new references on recent European assessments. They are: Van Eerdenberg et al. (202) A practical animal welfare assessment of dairy farms, and DeLuca et al. (2020) Abattoir based measures to assess swine welfare: Analysis of methods adopted in European slaughter houses.
A short section on future technologies that use artificial intelligence to assess conditions such as body condition of dairy cows and foot pad lesions in broilers has also been added.
Section 2.2 – Acts of Abuse and Neglect – additional working has been added.
Section 2.4 – Added additional detail on housing specifications. The housing specifications must include both prohibited housing and housing features that are required.
Section 3.1.1 – The point was removed. A section was also added to explain that falsified records are very common. All of the personalized I’s have been removed and replaced with “the author”. This has been corrected throughout the manuscript.
Sincerely,
Temple Grandin
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for your corrections.
