Animal welfare reports in cases of suspicion of animal cruelty.
2017
Molento, C. F. M. | Hammerschmidt, J.
The objective of this review is to describe how animal welfare assessment may be useful in defining a more objective threshold to decide on the existence of crimes against animals in scenarios where animals are alive. The Protocol for Expert Report on Animal Welfare in case of animal cruelty suspicion (PERAW) was developed to identify animal maltreatment and allows for adaptations to vertebrate species, provided care is taken to incorporate and adapt species-specific indicators. The Protocol is divided into four groups of indicators: (1) nutritional, (2) comfort, (3) health and (4) behavioural indicators, and proposes a simple integration method of the four groups, based on objective thresholds for the conclusion regarding the five proposed welfare degrees: very high, high, regular, low and very low degree of welfare. Very low and low welfare situations are reported as animal maltreatment, subject to criminal penalties. Regular welfare situations are monitored for corrective measures. Cases where high or very high welfare is characterized are dismissed. During the period from 2014 and 2016 the protocol was used in different conditions to identify animal maltreatment in various animal species. The general impression given by the results obtained along 3 years of PERAW use is that the tool has been useful in organizing the reports, facilitating coherence across different scenarios and species, and providing good discriminating power.
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