THEMATIC REPORT: Best Practices Ban of cages

Brief literature overview

The literature review for Work Package 2: Loose housing of lactating sows was written specifically with the challenges in mind, as a support for decision making for the Thematic Group experts with their task of ranking the collected Good Practices. The review starts with a short introduction to the theme including the ECI End the Cage Age and the level of implementation of loose housing of lactating sows in the eight regions in WelFarmers. The challenges recognized by the Regional Networks form the main part of the literature review including scientific evidence or experiences supporting mitigation of the challenges as well as recommendations. Scientific studies, reviews, reports from on-farm trials as well as EFSA opinions were used as references for the literature review to give a background and maybe insights on ways to overcome the challenges at hand. The literature review ends with a conclusion aiming to help the assessment of the Good Practices.

Challenges

Challenges were collected by the Regional Networks. For loose housing of lactating sows the eight most frequently mentioned challenges were the following (listed here highest to lowest in number of Regional Networks mentioning the challenge):

• Handling, safety, aggressive sows (Human Animal Relationship (HAR))
  • Safety of workers/the risk of the sow getting out of her place / dangers in operating free farrowing/increased aggressiveness of the sow
• Investment
  • Finansing problems/necessary investments and related amortisations/increased cost due to converting pens / cost to invest in new pens
• Welfare of piglets/piglet survivability
  • Increased mortality of piglets by crushing/mortality and injury to piglets
• Finding and training workers
  • Missing education and experience to handle loose lactating sows /reduced control of the sow / training workers with the new system / job more difficult
• Work ergonomics and welfare of staff 
  • Motivation of employees / well being of personnel
• Welfare of sows 
  • Sow stress in free farrowing
• Pen design 
  • Uncertainty in how to design the farrowing pens (dimensions, functional zones…)/ design of pens environment, climate, risk of higher emissions) / design of pen together with bedding and ventilation / a lot of variety in pen design. Straight to free farrowing or?
• Cost / competitiveness 
  • Decrease in production volume at farm/costs to change existing buildings/reduced competitiveness compared to 3rd countries

Scoring methodology

Collected Good Practices were scored by the individual expert members of the Thematic Group. In order to assess how effectively each Good Practice addresses the theme of loose housing of lactating sows and the related challenges specifically mentioned in the literature review, the experts scored each practice based on its excellence/technical quality (especially: challenges addressed, scientific evidence, efficacy, ongoing development, innovation), impact (especially: benefits for the pig sector, economic impact, knowledge exchange), and exploitation/ probability of success (especially: Feasibility, transferability, scalability, exploitation speed) by assigning each criterion a score on a scale from 0-5 (0=ineligible – 5=excellent).

Process of selection and discussion

In order to select the TOP5 of Good Practices, the Thematic Group experts met with the Work Package leader after individually scoring of Good Practices to discuss the selection of Best Practices. For this the final accumulated mean total scores and rankings were presented to provide the Thematic Group experts with an overview of the Good Practices after the scoring phase.
When considering good practices, they can either be related to ‘pen design’ and then ‘only’ be relevant for pig producers when establishing pens for loose lactating sows. However, considered the low level of implementation and that decisions regarding pen design are irreversible, good practices regarding pen design are important. The other group of good practices relates to the daily management, where the technical quality of the practice, the impact of the practice – both regarding pig welfare, environment and economics as well as the probability that the practice can be implemented successfully by other pig producers are important.

During the meeting the discussion focused on the five highest ranking Good Practices, which all had a mean score of over 3.8 points, as well as other Good Practice with a lower ranking that was brought to the discussion by members of the Thematic Group. Sixteen GP’s had scores of 3.5 or above.

Good Practices voted into the TOP5 were discussed.

• One focused the decision process (planning period) to qualify the pen design and thereby obtain a more robust production system (investment, worker safety, welfare, competitiveness)
• One focused on easy access to piglets (work ergonomics, worker safety)
• One focused on reducing piglet mortality
• One focused on reducing piglet mortality and increasing worker safety
• One focused on positive piglet welfare and enhancing weaning