EFSA EXTERNAL SCIENTIFIC REPORT: The use of animal-based measures to assess animal welfare in the EU - state of art of the last 10 years of activities and analysis of the gaps. Preparatory work.

The assignment was a study on how the concept and the use of animal-based measures (ABMs) have penetrated the animal welfare (AW) community. The study is based on a gap mapping analysis in order to identify and describe the main gaps of ten years of activities in the EU on the use of ABMs to assess AW. The analysis was carried out by reviewing EU-research findings (i.e. EU-funded projects’ reports and peer-reviewed papers), quality assurance schemes (QAS) and taking into account EUlegislative acts on ABMs. The outcomes of the study were used for further discussion on ABMs among AW experts. The main gaps identified in scientific peer-reviewed papers were: a low number of papers with the general ABMs terms (toolbox) and heterogeneity in the use of different synonyms; a high number of specific ABMs (755) which were not easy to understand if they were similar in meaning and in measurement methods. In the EU-funded projects, all the documents assessed contained general ABMs terms and a total of 272 specific ABMs were found in 80% of documents. A general ABMs term was found in 6 over 33 technical documents assessed for QAS, whereas specific ABMs (total 153) were identified in 94% of them. Two of the nine EU-legislative acts considered contained the general ABM’s concept (22%), and eight contained specific ABMs (89%). Assessing the penetration level in the peer-reviewed papers, the ratio between number of papers with the general ABMs terms and papers with AW was 0.79%: this could mean that the general terms are not largely used in the scientific contest of AW. In conclusion, specific ABMs are largely used as tools in the AW community, but there is a lack of their categorization within the general ABMs concept.