Towards an Animal Welfare Impact Category: Weighting Indicators in Pig Farming

Nina Treml (), Elias Naber and Frank Schultmann
Additional contact information
Nina Treml: Institute for Industrial Production (IIP), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hertzstr. 16, 76187 Karlsruhe, Germany
Elias Naber: Institute for Industrial Production (IIP), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hertzstr. 16, 76187 Karlsruhe, Germany
Frank Schultmann: Institute for Industrial Production (IIP), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hertzstr. 16, 76187 Karlsruhe, Germany

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 10, 1-18

Abstract: The understanding of sustainability is shifting from that of a purely environmental dimension to one that includes social concerns. Combined with the growing customer interest in livestock husbandry practices, this study investigates the assessment of animal welfare as a socially influenced impact category for the life cycle assessment (LCA) of pig farming. The weighting of animal welfare impacts is based on a quantitative approach using a set of indicators derived from an expert survey using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The aim is to develop an easy-to-implement score that translates the characteristics of several animal welfare indicators into a comparable value. To demonstrate the feasibility of the weighting part of the framework, a case study is conducted with nine experts in the fields of animal husbandry, agricultural sciences, and veterinary medicine. The case study results show that the main criteria of single animal observation and feed intake are the most relevant factors, at 30.6%, followed by operation-specific parameters at 23.9% and husbandry conditions at 14.9%. This case study highlights that animal losses (13.9%) significantly influence the impact category, while access to outdoor areas (1.4%) is less important. The overall conclusion is that an animal health-centered approach is preferable when assessing animal welfare.

Keywords: livestock; sustainability; multi-criteria decision analysis; LCA; AHP; sustainable agriculture; impact category; One Health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/10/4677/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/10/4677/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:10:p:4677-:d:1659878

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().