Animal Welfare in Swine Production

Animal production safety is closely related to the welfare of animals raised for food production and aims to maintain high animal health standards by protecting them. The chapter aims to introduce current European and National legislation on animal welfare in swine farming, starting from the foundation and maintenance of the five freedoms that condition animal welfare, general requirements regarding environ-mental and microclimatic parameters, and the human-animal relationship will there-fore be provided. In particular, the criteria and schemes for evaluating welfare from stable to transport to animal slaughter will be discussed. Consideration will be given to the various factors affecting animal welfare, in particular: the type of housing and roosting areas, the space available and the density of animals in the barn, transport conditions, stunning and slaughtering methods, castration of males, tail-cutting, feed quality, and housing cooling systems. Precision farming techniques will be ex-plained to support farmers in understanding and identifying animal behaviour, e.g., disease diagnosis, assistance in calving areas, improving breeding conditions, and reducing sickness factors.