Domains of greatest threat to welfare and potential best practices for mitigation in rabbit farming: results from the European Partnership for Animal Health and Welfare

According to EFSA, rabbits can face twenty welfare consequences under farming conditions, varying in frequency and duration based on animal category and housing system. To improve rabbit welfare, some best practices (BP) can be adopted, but structured information is still lacking. One aim of the EU Project EUPAHW is to fill this gap. Starting from literature search and expert opinion, welfare threats (WT) to rabbit welfare for growing rabbits, breeding does, and kits were collected. The WT were classified into welfare domains (health, behaviour, nutrition, mental and environment) and grouped into subcategories according to the main hazards they are linked to (e.g., management, housing conditions or genotype). Then, BP were identified for each WT and assigned to relevant production systems in which they are or can be implemented. The domains that grouped a higher number of WT were ”behaviour” for growing rabbits (13/37) and ”health” for kits (7/15) and breeding does (16/42). Most WT (45/94) for all animal categories fell into the ”housing conditions” sub-category. The BP primarily addressed the domains of Health and Behaviour but rarely mitigated more than one or two WT. As a matter of fact, few BP (1/29 for growing rabbits; 2/29 for breeding does) addressed at least three WT, namely: ”reduced stocking density” for growing rabbits, ”good climate control”, and ”good cleaning and biosecurity measures” for breeding does. For kits, only one BP out of 14 addressed two WT; none addressed three. Overall, our results show that managing welfare risks in rabbit farms is complex, but that some best practices can have an effect on several welfare domains or subcategories, on which it would be effective to focus efforts. This work was co-funded by the EU Horizon Europe Project 101136346 EUPAHW.