domain: sdv shs

text:
Henry Buller
email: h.buller@exeter.ac.uk

Harry Blokhuis
email: harry.blokhuis@slu.se

Kees Lokhorst
email: kees.lokhorst@wur.nl

Mathieu Silberberg
email: mathieu.silberberg@inrae.fr

Isabelle Veissier
email: isabelle.veissier@inrae.fr

Animal Welfare Management in a Digital World

Keywords: animal welfare, precision livestock farming, welfare management, welfare monitoring, welfare assurance

Simple Summary:

The digital revolution opens possibilities to use multiple sensors, a data infrastructure and data analytics to monitor animals or their environment 24/7. Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) offers significant opportunities for a holistic, evidence-based approach to the monitoring and surveillance of farmed animal welfare. To date, the emphasis of PLF has been on animal health and productivity. If PLF develops further along these lines, there is a risk that animal health and productivity define welfare. A combined multi-actor approach that brings together industry, scientists, food chain actors, policy-makers and NGOs is needed to develop and use the promise of PLF for the creative and effective improvement of farmed animal welfare, not only taking into account their physical welfare but also their mental one.

Introduction

Modern livestock farming has long been predicated upon ever-increasing levels of mechanisation. As herd and flock sizes increase and production methods intensify and specialize, so the technologies of automated identification, feeding, cleaning and slaughter have greatly multiplied allowing economies of scale to retain or expand food chain profitability. From automatic milking systems, commonplace on dairy farms across the higher income countries, to automated water-bath stunning and neck-cutting systems in poultry slaughterhouses, automation-which we might simply define as processes that can take place rapidly and repetitively with minimal direct human action-is both a consequence, and a driving force, in contemporary livestock agriculture.

By definition, automation represents a reduction in the direct intervention of humans (farmers and stock-persons) in the daily lives of farmed animals. For many commentators automation is widely welcomed as liberating the farmer and stock-person from at least some of the repetitive, and often hard, labour of husbandry [START_REF] Puckett | Mechanization of Livestock Production in the United States[END_REF][START_REF] Lunner-Kolstrup | Farm operators' experiences of advanced technology and automation in Swedish agriculture: A pilot study[END_REF], thereby allowing gains in farmer well-being and reduced labour costs. However, as far back as in the early 1960s, the author and early critic of 'factory farming', Harrison identified automation as a problem of 'unity', arguing that: 'Mechanical cleaning reduces still further the time the stockman has to spend with them, and the sense of unity with his stock which characterizes the traditional farmer is condemned as being uneconomic and sentimental'. ( [START_REF] Harrison | Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry[END_REF], p. [START_REF] Veissier | Élevage de précision et bien-être en élevage: La révolution numérique de l'agriculture permettra-t-elle de prendre en compte les besoins des animaux et des éleveurs?[END_REF] Recent analysis suggests that the current expansion of farm technologization requires new and often equally demanding data monitoring and management skills [START_REF] Hostiou | Impact of precision livestock farming on work and human-animal interactions on dairy farms. A review[END_REF], and can also bring new forms of farm worker exploitation and marginalisation [START_REF] Rotz | Automated pastures and the digital divide: How agricultural technologies are shaping labour and rural communities[END_REF][START_REF] Vik | The political robot-The structural consequences of automated milking systems (AMS) in Norway[END_REF]. Nevertheless, the general spread of farm automation has been a key feature of contemporary agricultural systems and has had a major impact not only upon farm labour forces but also upon both the animal welfare monitoring roles they undertake and the impact of those roles upon the animals themselves.

Automation also impacts upon the nature and perception of farmed animal welfare. One might argue that automation helped indirectly to set the early parameters for defining the welfare of farmed animals. Accepting the essentially artificial (and ever more automated) nature of farming systems that emerged in the 1970s, welfare was initially defined normatively as the ability of animals to cope with these intensive environments [START_REF] Broom | Indicators of poor welfare[END_REF]. For producers, a healthy animal has been essentially a productive one [START_REF] Fraser | Understanding Animal Welfare: The Science in its Cultural Context[END_REF], with health-and indirectly, welfare-being measured according to standardised, and increasingly automated, performance indicators.

Nevertheless, automation, in reducing the levels of observation and frequency of contact between farmer and farmed animal, has been charged with potentially making that relationship, in Cornou's words, 'distant and impoverished' [START_REF] Cornou | Automation Systems for Farm Animals: Potential Impacts on the Human-Animal Relationship and on Animal Welfare[END_REF], leading, on the one hand, to unrecognised or unacknowledged welfare issues [START_REF] Rushen | Domestic animals: Fear of humans and its effect on their welfare[END_REF][START_REF] Zulkifli | Review of human-animal interactions and their impact on animal productivity and welfare[END_REF] and, on the other, to a persistent oversimplification of welfare understanding [START_REF] Fraser | Understanding Animal Welfare: The Science in its Cultural Context[END_REF]. As definitions and approaches to farmed animal welfare grow in both measurement and sophistication, the time farmers and stock-persons actually spend in observing the animals in their charge is held to constitute an important factor in defining and determining their welfare [START_REF] Waiblinger | Assessing the human-animal relationship in farmed species: A critical review[END_REF]. Hence, in 2006, the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council identified the 'stockman' as having: 'a unique role within livestock farming in ensuring high standards of animal welfare', further arguing, in an echo of Ruth Harrison, that; 'the attributes of a good stockman include an affinity and empathy with livestock, patience, and keen observational skills amongst others' [START_REF]FAWC Report on Stockmanship and Farm[END_REF]. Similarly, current European Union and national welfare rules charge farmers and stock-persons with the responsibility to inspect animals at regular intervals (usually, at least once a day) to verify their wellbeing [START_REF]Council Directive 98/58/EC of 20 July 1998 concerning the protection of animals kept for farming purposes[END_REF], see also, for example, UK Government 2000; EU Council Directive 2008/119/EC [START_REF]Council Directive 2008/119/EC of 18 December 2008 laying down minimum standards for the protection of calves[END_REF]. Good welfare, it would seem, is in large part, dependent upon good observation.

In this paper, we argue that the current relationship between 'good observation' and 'good welfare' is no longer sufficient or appropriate. We note that despite an expanding raft of international and national animal welfare regulations, codes and practices, growing public awareness and an emerging sense of the marketable value of higher welfare products, there remain today considerable and persistent welfare concerns across all the major livestock production systems, ranging from the consistently high prevalence of lameness in dairy cattle and few possibilities for animals of all types to express natural behaviours in indoor systems. We ask, can Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) technologies address this observational hiatus?

Recent years have seen a series of major leaps forward in the technologies and methods of automated animal observation and monitoring, notably under the generic terminology of PLF whose general aim is to increase the efficiency of livestock farming systems and, in doing so, to take into account differences between individual animals or groups [START_REF] Guarino | Precision Livestock Farming '15[END_REF]. We argue that PLF technologies have a significant potential to support the management of animal welfare through radically new forms and mechanisms of observation. To date, however, that potential is both underdeveloped and under-studied. PLF technologies have the potential to monitor animal health and behaviour in ways that go beyond those of conventional welfare monitoring and observation. Moreover, they offer the opportunity to observe animal behaviour without interference.

In these ways, PLF technologies can help farmers detect problems and take management decisions to improve animal welfare at an early stage. The data derived from PLF technologies can be used to derive warnings and trigger notifications and alarms. Data can also be combined to create complex yet relevant welfare indicators that could be transmitted between food chain actors and developed into quality control procedures. Finally, PLF technologies offer the possibility of more holistic, continuous (whole-life) and standardised (comparable) welfare assessment for farmed animals across the full production chain. With this, of course, comes a certain number of concerns, not the least of them folding back to the role and expertise of the farmer/stock-person, now potentially an observer less of animals than of data, or to the established forms of agricultural advisory and decision-making structures that guide on-farm practice. As an increasing number of observers are pointing out, the growth of PLF technologies on farms raises new challenges for data management, distribution and ownership as well as recasting the role of the farmer or stock-person both with respect to the animals under their charge and to the valuable and sensitive data that increasingly represent them [START_REF] Ingram | What Are the Implications of Digitalisation for Agricultural Knowledge? Front[END_REF][START_REF] Rotz | The Politics of Digital Agricultural Technologies: A Preliminary Review[END_REF][START_REF] Klerkx | A review of social science on digital agriculture, smart farming and agriculture 4.0: New contributions and a future research agenda[END_REF].

In this paper, we examine how PLF technologies and broader developments in information and communication technologies might improve the observation, monitoring and assessment of farmed animal welfare, particularly in those areas and systems where generic welfare problems persist. We consider how PLF might enhance our understanding of welfare, and the means to assess it.

The Promise of PLF

The International Society for Precision Agriculture, established in the early 1990s to promote this area, produced an updated definition for Precision Agriculture: 'Precision Agriculture is a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated variability for improved resource use efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability of agricultural production'. [20] Although 'Precision Agriculture' initially emerged within the arable and crop sector [START_REF] Mulla | Historical evolution and recent advances in precision farming[END_REF], the technologies of real-time monitoring, data management and decision support are increasingly being applied to modern livestock systems. Wathes describes it as follows:

'Precision livestock farming, PLF, is an embryonic technology that applies the principles of process engineering to livestock farming. PLF requires a sensing system for inputs and outputs; a mathematical model of input/output relationships; a target and trajectory for controlled processes; and a model-based controller with actuators for process inputs. PLF has great potential to transform livestock production by efficient utilisation of nutrients, early warning of ill health, and reduction in pollutant emissions'. [START_REF] Wathes | Precision Livestock Farming for Animal Health, Welfare and Production[END_REF] However, PLF needs to be seen as more than simply better and more technologically advanced parameter monitoring and resource planning. For in its approach both to data and to the animal, PLF offers the potential for a more radical, almost ontological, reassessment of what welfare is and how it might be assessed. First, PLF, through the technologies of observation and monitoring, brings individual animals to the fore: 'A starting point in PLF is the recognition that each individual animal is [ . . . ] a CIT [complex, individual, time-variant] system. This contrasts with more classical approaches where animals are considered as 'an average of a population and due to its complexity as a steady state system'. [START_REF] Berckmans | Automatic On-line Monitoring of Animal Health and Welfare by Precision Livestock Farming[END_REF] Second, PLF allows for the establishment of welfare indicators and triggers that are not dependent solely upon periodic human observation and measurement [START_REF] Berckmans | Precision livestock farming technologies for welfare management in intensive livestock systems[END_REF].

Over the last 10 years, PLF techniques have been adopted across a range of different livestock systems, specially the dairy sector [START_REF] Lokhorst | An Introduction to Smart Dairy Farming[END_REF][START_REF] Caja | Engineering to support wellbeing of dairy animals[END_REF]. The continually expanding demand for animal products, consumer (and retail) demand for more welfare friendly production, economic pressures and, at the same time, the need to reduce environmental impacts, all combine to require livestock farming to become ever-more efficient, leading to larger farms, labour reduction and increased mechanisation. PLF is seen as a major contributor to contemporary and efficient animal production; for example, by detecting oestrus prior to insemination, by adapting feeding to individual rates of animal weight gain and through the early detection of disease. Greater 'efficiency', whether in animal production, in resource and labour use, in feed and medication usage, in animal reproduction and so on, is the watchword of PLF. Some 35 of the 121 papers given at the EC-PLF Conference in 2019 explicitly addressed efficiency gains of PLF technologies [START_REF] O'brien | Precision Livestock Farming '19[END_REF]. Although still in relatively early stages of development, recent evidence shows that farmers and food chain actors are acquiring PLF technologies for a variety of reasons including the facilitation of their management roles and the improvement of their own well-being through reducing the workload especially for large herds and limiting repetitive tasks [START_REF] Hostiou | Precision livestock farming: Which consequences for farmers' work?[END_REF][START_REF] Carolan | Automated agrifood futures: Robotics, labor and the distributive politics of digital agriculture[END_REF].

In practical terms, PLF technologies generally involve the fixing of sensors, or other forms of observational/monitoring technology, to individual animals and/or their environment, which continuously monitor a series of different parameters. Algorithms are then deployed to generate indicators and detect anomalies in these time-series data. A growing number of PLF technologies are now available on the market. These include: The adoption of these technologies varies considerably. RFID and accelerometer technologies are well integrated, but other technologies still have to achieve a viable market share. As we have said above, most of the PLF technologies currently in commercial use are aimed principally at improving productive efficiency either through the close monitoring of such parameters as feed and oestrus or through the surveillance of (individual) animal health data. Indeed, we would argue that the primacy (and growing abundance) of productivity and health data through PLF technologies has to some extent distracted attention from both the continuing need for, and the possibilities of, data and PLF generated indicators of animal welfare. Moreover, where they have been applied, such technologies have tended to focus primarily on conventional production systems, with less attention given to systems that place a higher premium of animal welfare [START_REF] Rios | How Are Information Technologies Addressing Broiler Welfare? A Systematic Review Based on the Welfare Quality ® Assessment[END_REF]. Hence, although commentators such as Berckmans [START_REF] Berckmans | Precision livestock farming technologies for welfare management in intensive livestock systems[END_REF] and Blokhuis [START_REF] Blokhuis | Safeguarding farm animal welfare[END_REF]), strongly advocate the use of PLF to monitor animal behaviour, and thereby to address welfare issues in broilers and in pigs, both acknowledge that considerable challenges and trade-offs remain.

The Potential of PLF to Monitor Animal Welfare

With growing societal awareness and concern for the welfare of farmed animals, as evidenced in countless reports and publications as well as a growing raft of legislation and welfare certification, PLF technologies face a particular quandary. Inevitably and inescapably associated with the increasing automation, technologisation and industrialisation of livestock farming (though perhaps ironically, offering enhanced possibilities to closely monitor the states of individual animals), PLF needs to demonstrate its relevance and contribution to improving the welfare of farmed animals. As we have said elsewhere, PLF technologies are likely to come under significant pressure, both from food chain actors and consumers, to provide valid welfare gains [START_REF] Blokhuis | Animal Welfare information in a changing world[END_REF][START_REF] Veissier | Élevage de précision et bien-être en élevage: La révolution numérique de l'agriculture permettra-t-elle de prendre en compte les besoins des animaux et des éleveurs?[END_REF]. Some PLF companies certainly have begun to explicitly address welfare issues through their particular technologies (such as the specifically welfare oriented Time'Live tool). The Chickenboy, for example, has described its technology as an 'autonomous, smart broiler robot that monitors air quality, health and welfare and equipment operation' while eYeNamic offers 'valuable indicators of broiler welfare'. The challenge is that welfare is now recognized as a complex physiological and psychological state, comprised of multiple dimensions. To date, PLF technologies have focused primarily upon the physical components of health and welfare (growth, feeding, and health). The challenge for PLF, from an animal welfare perspective, is to combine and assemble data of potentially widely differing types and varied sources into meaningful indicators that include the other aspects of welfare, such as mental state, naturalness and resilience.

It is axiomatic that European livestock farming still faces a number of major and persistent and system-wide animal welfare problems [START_REF]Pork Production-Strategic Approach Documents[END_REF][START_REF]Broiler Chicken Production-Strategic Approach Documents[END_REF][START_REF]Beef & Dairy Production-Strategic Approach Documents[END_REF][START_REF]Hazard identification for pigs at slaughter and during on-farm killing[END_REF][START_REF]Hazard identification and ranking for poultry at slaughter[END_REF] such as lameness in dairy cattle, tail biting in pigs, poor locomotion in broilers as well as long-standing generic issues in transport and slaughter. Moreover, the active promotion of positive welfare states and the encouragement of better opportunities for animals to express natural behaviour, the value of which in welfare terms are widely acknowledged by science [START_REF] Boissy | Assessment of positive emotions in animals to improve their welfare[END_REF][START_REF] Lee | Preference of beef cattle for feedlot or pasture environments[END_REF][START_REF] Phillips | A review of the impact of housing on dairy cow behaviour, health and welfare[END_REF] and valued by consumers [START_REF] Miele | The taste of happiness: Free-range chicken[END_REF], remain largely incompatible (or unmeasurable) with many contemporary production systems. If it is to make a substantive contribution to addressing genuine animal welfare concerns, PLF technology must therefore address itself to these two critical areas; the effective monitoring and identification of systemic welfare failures and the active enhancement of opportunities for positive welfare experiences. In this, however, PLF technologies need to go further than the ad hoc or corrective addressing of specific and persistent welfare problems. Ultimately, PLF technologies need to be integrated, from the start, into the design of new farming systems and production technologies [START_REF] Phillips | Configuring the new digital landscape in western Canadian agriculture[END_REF] so that animal welfare becomes an integral component of them.

The Welfare Quality Project identified 12 key criteria that need to be addressed to cover all aspects of animal welfare [START_REF] Christoph | Welfare Quality ® Assessment Protocol for Cattle (Fattening Cattle, Dairy Cows, Veal Calves)[END_REF]. Innovative applications of the various PLF approaches mentioned above, along with others still in development, could, we argue, generate crucial data for the effective monitoring of all of these, as Molina et al. [START_REF] Maroto-Molina | Welfare Quality ® for dairy cows: Towards a sensor-based assessment[END_REF] have recently demonstrated with respect to dairy cows. Current PLF technologies already offer the opportunity to provide robust and continuous information across a range of measures identified by the Welfare Quality research as listed in Table 1. Table 1. Examples of possible PLF approaches to the Welfare Quality criteria of good welfare.

Welfare Outcome PLF Approach

Absence of prolonged hunger Body condition score of cattle assessed by imaging technologies [START_REF] Allain | Use of a 3D imaging device to model the complete shape of dairy cattle and measure new morphological phenotypes[END_REF], time spent waiting in front the feeding table when food is not available Absence of prolonged thirst Time spent at drinkers can be detected using RFID detectors [START_REF] De Mol | Monitoring pig behaviour by RFID registrations[END_REF] or camera tracking [START_REF] Labrecque | Real-time Individual Pig Tracking And behavioural Metrics Collection with Affordable Security Cameras[END_REF] Comfort around resting Time spent in lying areas can be obtained RTLS technologies, the time spent actually lying down can be recorded with accelerometers

Thermal comfort

Sensors to measure heart rate or respiratory rates (which are increased in case of high heat load) already exist at least for large species; the ambient conditions are already monitored (temperature, humidity),

Ease of Movement The use of the different areas can be assessed through RTLS with ultra wide band emitters inside or GPS outside Absence of injuries External injuries can be detected at least at slaughter from image analysis [START_REF] Van Harn | Validation Meyn Footpad Inspection System[END_REF] Absence of disease Continuous monitoring of animals' behaviour can detect changes in time budgets (time spent feeding, ruminating, resting, walking, etc.) and in circadian rhythms of activities and such behavioural changes may reflect sickness [START_REF] Aubert | Sickness and behaviour in animals: A motivational perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Mintline | Play behavior as an indicator of animal welfare: Disbudding in dairy calves[END_REF][START_REF] Mandel | Detection and monitoring of metritis in dairy cows using an automated grooming device[END_REF][START_REF] Veissier | Short communication: Early modification of the circadian organization of cow activity in relation to disease or estrus[END_REF].

Monitoring of coughs can indicate respiratory disease [56]

Absence of pain induced by management procedures

Experience of pain can be detected from facial expressions in sheep [START_REF] Lu | Estimating sheep pain level using facial action unit detection[END_REF] and pigs (ongoing project from Bristol Robotics Laboratory (https://www.bbc.com/news/av/scienceenvironment-49362428/pigs-emotions-could-be-read-bynew-farming-technology))

Expression of social behaviours

The functioning of the social group can be on the basis of the animals' interactions, positions and activity [START_REF] Lee | Automatic recognition of aggressive behavior in pigs using a kinect depth sensor[END_REF][START_REF] Rocha | Persistence of sociality in group dynamics of dairy cattle[END_REF] Expression of other behaviours

The use by farmed animals of specific welfare enhancing resources can be monitored. For example, the use of brushes by cattle can be detected by accelerometers on brushes coupled while the animals proximity to the brush can be detected with an RFID detector or a RTLS [START_REF] Meunier | Image analysis to refine measurements of dairy cow behaviour from a real-time location system[END_REF] the use of outdoor areas by poultry can be monitored using infrared beams that detect when the birds go through the passage to the outdoor area.

The approaches to defined outcomes in Table 1 are predominantly associated with welfare on farm. The monitoring of ambient conditions and the recording of physiological parameters on animals (such as heart and respiratory rates) could help to assure that animals are transported in appropriate conditions. Similarly, at slaughter, PLF technologies that allow for the monitoring and analysis of animal movement to ensure effective welfare at slaughter are currently being investigated [START_REF] Pinillos | We need to make more use of technology in the slaughter industry to improve welfare[END_REF].

For many of these welfare concerns, the PLF observational and monitoring technology is available. However, what is required are appropriate algorithms and data assemblages to enable effective welfare indicators to be developed and to determine mechanisms for intervention when deviations from normal or intended positive states are recorded. Such indicators, we maintain, will require that data from different sensors, are combined with other data sources and interpreted together. Thus, for example an effective indicator of dairy cow welfare would need to bring together individualised data on heart and respiratory rates, (which will vary with days in lactation), milk yield, ambient parameters that assess heat load as well as environmental and behavioural data [START_REF] Pinto | Influence of Barn Climate, Body Postures and Milk Yield on the Respiration Rate of Dairy Cows[END_REF][START_REF] Jones | Fear and other negative emotions[END_REF].

As PLF technologies and tools develop, we estimate that they will have significant potential to increase our capacity to monitor and address animal welfare. They will provide the means to monitor farmed animal health and welfare and detect disorders thereby enabling both rapid and accurate treatment of disease or behavioural disorders and the prevention of their spread to other animals. Moreover, PLF technologies will facilitate the assessment of animal premises and farm environments (including transport and slaughter environments). For both, PLF technologies allow for continuous, rather than 'snap-shot' observation notably across periods and in locations where human observation is either problematic or impossible.

It seems to us essential that technology developers, biologists, ethologists and veterinarians work closely together in developing the opportunities for new observational and monitoring tools that specifically address welfare issues at different points in the livestock production chain, from farm to slaughterhouse. Critically, this will require the design of appropriate algorithms, data trigger points, alerts and warning systems, along with other mechanisms that allow for individual and generic welfare incidents and issues to be identified and subsequently addressed by producers.

Perspectives to Improve Animal Welfare in a Digital World

Livestock farming is currently experiencing something of a numerical revolution with the multiplication of environmental and animal health sensors and their integration into various large data platforms and information systems. To date, the primary objectives of this new observational technology have been animal health and productivity. However, there is also an imperative that these new approaches be employed both in the monitoring and improvement of other aspects of farmed animal welfare and in the repositioning of welfare in the design of new and innovative production systems. Research and innovation is particularly needed in the development of, first, effective data management systems to allow for effective welfare indicators and alerts to be constructed and relayed to farm (or transport and slaughterhouse) personnel and, second, efficient data storage and recording techniques to permit the construction of relevant time-series data that can inform processes of benchmarking, certification and compliance monitoring. Both of these offer the potential to take farm animal welfare monitoring and, ultimately improvement, forward in new, dynamic and innovative ways. As such, animal welfare scientists, ethologists and veterinarians have a critical input to make to these necessary processes. However, both also raise certain challenges in themselves. As Klerkx et al. [START_REF] Klerkx | A review of social science on digital agriculture, smart farming and agriculture 4.0: New contributions and a future research agenda[END_REF] pointed out, relatively little attention has been paid so far within the precision farming literature to the complex societal questions around data use, ownership and circulation and how different food chain actors, from food processors and retailers to veterinarians and farmers, might use such technologies and data to ultimately, in their words, transform agricultural production systems, value chains and food systems.

We recognise that the growth of PLF technology and its specific application to the monitoring and improvement of farmed animal welfare raises a number of broader issues that also need to be addressed. First amongst these are the complex technical and scientific issues around welfare definition, the establishment of effective welfare indicators and the validity of the data collected by the new technologies of observation and surveillance. The production of welfare indicators has been an important area of recent animal welfare science and increasingly indicator protocols are being used by commercial food chain actors both to segment markets and to reassure concerned consumers. While PLF can provide new and complex data on animal health and behaviour, the development of relevant algorithms to combine individual data sets into meaningful indicators remains a significant challenge. How that data, and combinations thereof, are translated into cues for action and intervention, is an associated technical concern that will necessitate not only effective alert systems but also relevant training for farm personnel.

A second issue is the perceived difficulties of applying PLF technologies to extensive livestock systems. To date, PLF technologies have been primarily targeted at intensive, high input, high technology livestock systems, where animals are often housed in relative high densities. While this has undoubtedly been the dominant model of global agricultural development over the last few decades, less intensive and more 'sustainable' forms of livestock farming, and specific support mechanisms for their extension, have also seen a significant rise in recent years, particularly within Europe. However, extensive livestock systems have not seen the rapid adoption of precision farming technologies that has characterized intensive production [START_REF] Roxburgh | The future of food production research in the rangelands: Challenges and prospects for research investment, organisation and human resources[END_REF] for a number of complex structural, environmental and technological reasons [START_REF] Bahlo | The role of interoperable data standards in precision livestock farming in extensive livestock systems: A review[END_REF]. Nevertheless, while, we note a growing research interest in extending PLF to extensively raised animals through such approaches as group or herd monitoring, GPS and RFID technologies [START_REF] Bocquier | Elevage de précision en systèmes d'élevage peu intensifiés[END_REF][START_REF] Lamb | Precision pastures: Opportunities and challenges for spatial information to improve productivity and animal welfare in extensive livestock systems[END_REF][START_REF] Morgan-Davies | Impacts of using a precision livestock system targeted approach in mountain sheep flocks[END_REF], such approaches, like their equivalent in intensive systems, have tended to date to focus predominantly upon productivity and health rather than welfare.

A third issue relates to the nature, deployment and ownership of the data produced by PLF technologies [START_REF] Rotz | The Politics of Digital Agricultural Technologies: A Preliminary Review[END_REF][START_REF] Carolan | Smart' Farming Techniques as Political Ontology: Access, Sovereignty and the Performance of Neoliberal and Not-So-Neoliberal Worlds[END_REF]. Currently, most of the data produced by existing PLF technologies is site specific (i.e., it serves to adjust the management on a given farm, transport unit or slaughterhouse, and is not exchanged between the food chain actors). Moreover, it is rarely (if at all) aligned with other on-farm data sets, such as data from automatic milking systems, veterinary surveillance data or post-mortem data from slaughterhouses. The full potential of more integrated data fields is still a long way off [START_REF] Lokhorst | Invited review: Big Data in precision dairy farming[END_REF], although many food chain actors are beginning to develop integrated data management systems across their supply chains for quality assurance purposes, aimed both at consumers and contracted producers. Examples of this include De Hoeve Innovatie (KDV) in the Netherlands and Carrefour in France who use sophisticated tracking technologies for their animal products. While, for the moment at least, such data sets are generally private, there would be major advantages if large-scale commercial monitoring and surveillance data was shared with producers and veterinarians for benchmarking, early warning of disease and behavioural issues, assessment of fitness for transport and so on. In short, new business models for the distribution and use of PLF monitoring data are required if greater transparency is to be achieved and if farm animal welfare, as a public good, is to be lastingly improved.

A final concern brings us back to the farmers and stock-persons with whom we began this article. Under PLF their roles and their expertise, in addition to their relationship to the animals under their care, changes and this too requires management and adaptation. The daily walk-through the broiler shed may well be replaced by the periodic reading of on-screen data or the reception of phone-alerts. As [START_REF] Cornou | Automation Systems for Farm Animals: Potential Impacts on the Human-Animal Relationship and on Animal Welfare[END_REF] points out, actual contacts with farmed animals may be reduced to physical interventions of a less welfare-friendly nature, thereby exacerbating the potential for negative animal responses to human presence. Thus, as the nature of husbandry work shifts, so too does the nature of animal care. On the other hand, when technologies relieve the workload, farmers can spend more time close to their animals, as was observed in some farms acquiring an automatic milking system [START_REF] Kling-Eveillard | The effects of PLF on human animal relationship on farm[END_REF]. Given the possible associations we identify above between PLF and consumer concerns for the automation of husbandry, this too needs to be carefully thought through. While some might argue that farmed animals are more likely to exhibit 'natural' behaviour when humans are absent, the environments in which they live are, to a greater or lesser extent, far from natural and our responsibility for their care no less strong.

Conclusions

PLF offers significant opportunities for a more holistic, evidence-based approach to the monitoring and surveillance of farmed animal welfare. To date, the emphasis within existing PLF technologies has been predominantly on animal health and productivity and, as such technologies develop further along these lines, we must ensure that these alone do not come to define welfare. To achieve this, PLF developers, animal welfare scientists and food chain actors need to collaborate, along with farmers and veterinarians, in widening the remit of PLF to address welfare issues in a more holistic and technologically creative manner. This needs to take place along three co-related fronts: first, in extending the capacity of PLF technologies to identify and measure appropriate welfare issues-suggesting the need for collaboration between welfare scientists and PLF technology developers; second, in addressing the complex issue of data construction and its translation into effective mechanisms for alert and response-suggesting an important role for on-farm demonstration and training; and third, in seeking ways of validating effective PLF welfare monitoring into quality assurance mechanisms and the value chain-implying an extended collaboration between welfare science, NGOs, food chain actors and consumer interests. In driving all of these forward, we believe that contemporary animal welfare science has a leading role to play.

  Electronic identification of large animals (cattle, pigs) thanks to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, allowing the tracking of animals in the various processing locations they may pass through.

		monitor-
		for-broilers) to describe the distribution and activity of pigs and poultry respectively, or a solution
		produced by Meyn to inspect footpads in poultry in the slaughterhouse);
	•	Sound recording to detect coughing or vocalisations from animals (e.g., SoundTalks (https:
		//www.soundtalks.com/));
	•	Temperature and humidity recording, e.g., inside the vehicles that transport animals [31],

•

Real-Time Locating Systems (RTLS) to detect the position of animals and infer their activity (e.g., CowView (http://www.gea-cowview.com/), CowManager (https://www.cowmanager.com/ en-us/)); • Accelerometers to measure whether an animal is standing, lying, moving and even eating or ruminating (e.g., Heat'Live, Time'Live and Feed'Live (https://www.cowmanager.com/en-us/), IceQube (https://www.icerobotics.com/researchers/)); • Cameras coupled with image analysis (e.g., Kinect cameras to detect aggression in pigs [30], RO-MAIN smaRt Cam (http://www.ro-main.com/en/products/details_products.php?no_produit= 54) and EyeNamic (https://www.fancom.com/solutions/biometrics/eyenamic-behaviouror temperature of the animals themselves (e.g., Moow rumen bolus (http://moow.farm/)); • Weighing scales to weigh animals or control their feeding; • Specific sensors to monitor biomarkers such as ruminal pH in cows (e.g., e-Cow FarmBolus (https: //ecow.co.uk/the-ebolus-for-researchers/)), hormones (e.g., Herd Navigator with progesterone detection in milk) or gases (e.g., ChickenBoy (https://faromatics.com/products/)); •

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.


domain: shs sdv

text:
I Veissier

M Miele

L Mounier

Animal welfare official inspections: farmers and inspectors shared concerns

Keywords: Animal protection, Inspection method, Legislation, Official controls, Perceptions Implications

Official inspections to check the compliance of farms with European legislation to protect farm animals are often perceived negatively by farmers. In addition, the inspections have a limited effect on improving farm compliance. We looked at the perceptions of both farmers and their inspectors about animal welfare and the inspections in a case study of dairy production in France. The identification of gaps and commonalities between both parties should help us to propose improvements in the inspection method by which inspections could more likely encourage compliance with animal welfare legislation. To achieve this aim, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 dairy farmers and their 19 inspectors. Both farmers and inspectors described animal welfare in terms of the state of the animal and of the living conditions and care provided to them. The majority of farmers found that the official checklist used by the inspectors is inappropriate to assess the welfare of their animals; inspectors themselves reported that they often use their own criteria and indicators (often based on the observation of animals) in addition to the official checklist. Both groups disagreed with some requirements of the legislation. These findings suggest that the content and background of the legislation to protect animals should be made clearer to both farmers and inspectors and that these two groups of actors should be involved in the definition of key points to be checked on farms, with special attention to animal-based indicators. All this could improve farmers' engagement with the results of the inspections and, hopefully, could lead to better compliance with legislation and improvements in animal welfare on farms.

Introduction

According to the cross-compliance system in place in the European Union (EU), farms must be inspected on several grounds regarding the Common Agricultural Policy (see for instance https://ec.europa.eu/ info/food-farming-fisheries/key-policies/common-agricultural-policy/ income-support/cross-compliance_en), including animal welfare [START_REF] Kuhn | Implementation of cross-compliance related to animal welfare[END_REF]. If a farm in receipt of EU subsidies does not comply with EU legislation on animal welfare, its subsidies are likely to be reduced. To protect animals on farms, the legislative acts are directives, whereby EU countries must achieve certain results while being free to decide how to do so. A directive can give general rules that apply to all species (Council Directive 98/58/EC) or be specific to a production (calves, broilers, laying hens, pigs).The compliance with the legislation improves slowly in the absence of a specific directive, such as for adult cattle. For instance, in France, only cattle farms that are inspected (a small percentage of the population each year) improveas seen by their better results during a second inspectionwhile no improvement is observed across years among cattle farms newly inspected; still most of the farms inspected do not improve (only 23% chances of improvement in a farm that is re-inspected [START_REF] Lomellini-Dereclenne | Implementation of the European legislation to protect farm animals: a case study on French inspections to find solutions to improve compliance[END_REF]).

Most of the EU legislation to protect animals is based on minimal requirements about the conditions in which animals live (or are transported or killed). For instance, the Council Directive 98/58/EC (European Commission, 1998), that applies to animals bred or kept for farming purposes whatever their species (actually only vertebrates), includes requirements on the freedom of movement, the inspection of animals by stock people, the care of ill and injured animals, the quality of lighting and of the air in barns, the ambient temperature, the functioning of automated and mechanical equipment, feeding and watering, breeding and breeding procedures and the competence of the staff. There are more specific directives for some animal types. For instance, Council Directive 2008/119/EC (European Council, 2009) laid down minimum requirements for calves under 6 months of age, e.g. calves should not be in individual crates after 8 weeks of age, and the minimal space allowance is specified according to the calves' weight. All these requirements aim at assuring minimum resources and conditions for animals in order to prevent animal suffering and to address public concerns [START_REF] Miele | Competing discourses of farm animal welfare and agri-food restructuring[END_REF]. It is implicitly assumed that a good level of welfare is achieved if minimal requirements are respected. Official inspections of farms in EU member states are then based on the checking of these conditions (eg Agence fédérale belge pour la sécurité de la chaîne alimentaire, 2015; Ministère français de l 'agriculture, 2015).

Although there is plenty of evidence in current literature that EU farmers consider inspections necessary to comply with the law, many of them complain about the 'increased bureaucracy' associated with the animal welfare regulation and inspections [START_REF] Roe | The performance of farm animal assessment[END_REF][START_REF] Kirchner | Attitudes and expectations of beef farmers in Austria, Germany and Italy towards the Welfare Quality (R) assessment system[END_REF][START_REF] Escobar | Paperwork and the decoupling of audit and animal welfare: the challenges of materiality for better regulation[END_REF]. The apparent disparity between the views of farmers and the inspection services may be barriers to motivate farmers to improve the living conditions of animals. By contrast, a common understanding between farmers and inspectors of animal welfare, the legislation and the control system and a good dialogue between these parties should encourage animal welfare improvements [START_REF] Anneberg | To inspect, to motivate -or to do both? A dilemma for on-farm inspection of animal welfare[END_REF].

More precisely, farmers criticize the very methods used to inspect their farms on several grounds: -Animal welfare is described by most farmers as instrumental for good production and as an integral part of their identity and practice, as 'the common sense' of good farming. According to this view, the identification of welfare problems should be straightforward to farmers and does not require precise measurements of the environment/housing where the animals live [START_REF] Anneberg | The experience of animal welfare inspections as perceived by Danish livestock farmers: a qualitative research approach[END_REF]; -The methods used to inspect seem decoupled from the purpose. The values associated with the implementation of regulations concerning the welfare of animals (that animals are treated properly) do not seem in line with the method for inspection. In other words, the indicators used for inspections are considered unsuitable to detect in a sensitive and specific manner the animal's welfare problems on farms.

As a consequence, some farmers complain that inspectors focus 'more on the process than on the animals themselves': ticking boxes to indicate the provision of a particular resource becomes an end in itself, missing the overall purpose of the inspection [START_REF] Escobar | Paperwork and the decoupling of audit and animal welfare: the challenges of materiality for better regulation[END_REF].

Lomellini-Dereclenne et al. ( 2017) pointed out that French inspectors apparently do not strictly follow the guidelines provided by the Ministry of Agriculture to check the compliance of farms. It seems that inspectors themselves question the method they are supposed to use for inspecting farms on animal welfare grounds.

The present study aimed at gaining a deeper understanding about the contested issues regarding the current inspection system for the protection of farm animals. More specifically, we investigated whether the criticisms about the actual inspections come from the legislative requirements or the method used for inspection that may each be perceived as inappropriate. We also investigated the perception of animal welfare to explore what could be seen as appropriate indicators of welfare. We studied the perceptions of a group of dairy farmerswhose farms had been subject to an inspection in the last yearsand their inspectors about animal welfare and the official inspections to protect animals on farms. The identification of gaps and commonalities between farmers and inspectors should allow us to propose improvements to the inspection method by which inspections could more likely encourage farm compliance with legislation and thereby welfare improvements.

Material and methods

Type of inspections

We carried out a study in France within the framework of crosscompliance with the Common Agricultural Policy according to which at least 1% of the farms are to be inspected by official veterinary services, that is at least 2200 farms among the 220 000 French livestock farms (according to the statistics produced by the Ministry for agriculture, https://agreste.agriculture.gouv.fr/agreste-web/). Before these inspections, the farmers receive a notification by phone at least 2 days before the visit. The farm visit is carried out by two inspectors at a time. The inspectors look at the farm and at documents (e.g. farm records) and check if actions were undertaken in any cases where non-compliances had been observed during a previous visit. At the end of the visit, the inspectors summarise orally the results obtained for the various items of the checklist to the farmers. After the visit, the inspectors write a full report, containing both negative (non-compliant items) and positive results. The report is checked by the head of the animal health and welfare department from the regional services of the Ministry of Agriculture, and then it is sent to the farmer.

We targeted farms with dairy cows and calves because they receive subsidies from the EU and are thus concerned about cross-compliance. Moreover, there is no specific directive for cattle (except for calves under 6 months) so this opens possibilities for divergent interpretations on how compliance should be checked. The central administration of the French Ministry of Agriculture elaborated a checklist to be used by field inspectors (Ministère français de l'agriculture, 2015). This list includes the following items: (See Table 1.) -Accommodation (protection against adverse conditions and quality of enclosures when animals are outdoors; quality of building materials, flooring and ambience when they are indoors); -Equipment (feeding, watering and ventilation devices not harmful, appropriate and functioning well); -Staff (qualification, knowledge, number); -Management (inspection of animals, no painful practices, isolation and treatment of ill animals); -Resources (quantity and quality of feeding and watering); -Farm records.

Interviewees

Out of the database from the French Ministry of Agriculture that contains all inspection reports, we selected 22 dairy farmers located in an area of 150 km around Lyon (France) and that had been inspected at least once between 2009 and 2013. The farmers were randomly selected from this population because we had no pre-conceived hypotheses of the factors that would influence their perceptions. Once we selected the farmers, we checked that we obtained a range of elements that are usually taken into account in farm surveys such as farmer gender (17 men and 5 women), age (from 25 to 59 years old) and size of herds (from 12 to 350 dairy cows) (Table 2). All farms were run by the family or in partnership. Only one farm was certified organic. Some farmers had another professional experience before becoming farmers, and one farmer had another part-time job.

We identified the 19 inspectors (13 men and 6 women) who conducted the inspections of the 22 selected farms (Table 3). They were technicians from veterinary official services or veterinary inspectors. Six of them had a background in agriculture. They had from 1 to 30 years of experience.

Interviews and their analysis

Eight students from the French national school for veterinary services (Lyon, France) carried out the interviews. A lecturer in social sciences trained the students on research methods and sociological approaches to interviewing. Each interview was conducted by one student only. The students conducted face-to-face interviews with the farmers between January and March 2014, after contacting the farmers by phone and inviting them to take part in the study. Another student interviewed the inspectors during summer 2014 after the department to which the inspectors belong had been contacted; these interviews were conducted by phone whenever possible (about half of the interviews) or else by mail (after the questions had been sent out) when an inspector was not available for a phone interview. None of the interviewers and interviewees knew each other before the start of the study. A PhD student from the French national school for veterinary services coordinated the interviews. She selected the farmers and inspectors; she designed the interview guideswith advice from the second author and she instructed the students on how to perform the interviews. The interviews were semi-structured interviews [START_REF] Bryman | Social research methods[END_REF]. Farmers and inspectors were asked about their work and the constraints upon it. More specific issues were addressed on their perceptions of inspections, of animal welfare, of the legislation to protect farm animals and of the method to assess animal welfare in official inspections (see Supplementary Materials SM1 and SM2). For farmers, these issues were addressed among others in relation to inspections for cross-compliance with the Common Agricultural Policy. The guides were pilot-tested during face-to-face interviews with five farmers and three inspectors.

Each interview lasted approximately 1.5 h. The interviewers asked for the consent of farmers and inspectors to use a voice recorder during the interviews. They guaranteed them that the data would be anonymized and used for research purposes only. They then transcribed the interviews in full. Following [START_REF] Zhang | Qualitative analysis of content[END_REF], we qualitatively analyzed the texts, identifying the main themes emerging during the interviews (e.g. animals' emotions when the farmers referred to their animals' happiness, sadness or fear). We drew a table with these themes. Then, we read the interviews a second time to identify which farmer or inspector mentions emotions in animals or another theme and the context in which these views were expressed. The first and second authors analyzed the interviews. The results reported here correspond to concordant interpretations. The farmers' interviews provided rich narratives of their practices and their relations to the animals as well as their perception of the official inspections. The inspectors' interviews addressed the challenges of their work.

Below, we present the results of the qualitative analysis by focusing on the main themes and providing extracts of interviews to illustrate the main points that arose. We also mention how many interviews support each finding in order to give a sense of their relevance. Nevertheless, these numbers do not allow running statistical analyses. Indeed, contrary to answers to a questionnaire, when a theme is not mentioned by someone, it does not automatically follow that this person disagrees with it.

Results

The themes addressed by each interviewee are summarized in Table 2 for farmers and Table 3 for inspectors.

Inspections perceived as necessary for accountability by farmers but often considered ineffective in promoting animal welfare by both farmers and inspectors Farmers' views. Eleven farmers perceived the inspection as something positive: to them, inspections are legitimate because there have been excesses in farming practices in the past (too much intensification of animal production) or because they receive subsidies (and they need to be accountable). In addition, the farmers agreed that the inspections have improved over time and that nowadays they are done in a professional way.

(See example in Box 1). By contrast, six farmers saw the inspections as bureaucratic, timeconsuming and not relevant in terms of assessing animal welfare. One of them (who was found not compliant with the regulation) perceived the inspections as harassment:

Farmer 7: "Ah… when you attack me like that, it goes wrong. I told them 'What you are doing here is harassment!' They accused me of killing a calf on farm [instead of sending it to the slaughterhouse], I told them, 'You do not realise the violence of your words, there ....'" Inspectors' views. Most inspectors (15) insisted on the benefit of establishing a constructive dialogue with farmers during inspections, including explanations on the content of the inspection and the legislative requirements:

Inspector 6: 'You have to be a teacher and do not hesitate to repeat the explanations several times. The hardest thing to overcome is not understanding but apathy, for years of routine, social misery and lack of financial resources.'

Six of the inspectors mentioned that in some cases, they have doubts about the positive effects of giving explanations to farmers about noncompliances. When asked 'Do you have the impression that you can have a constructive dialogue with farmers?':

Inspector 1: 'Yes, when there is no problem. Not for people who deny [the evidence, in that case] only the sanction works… Farmers don't always understand why a non-compliance is a non-compliance. In the case of farmers that makes us worry; it is rarely the case because they are not

M Yes x x x x x x x x 2 M Yes x x x x x x x x 3 M No x x x x x x 4 F No x x x x 5 F No x x x x x 6 F Yes 2 x x x x x x x x x -3 -3 7 M No x x x 8 F Yes x x x x -3 -3 9 M No x x x x x x 10 M No x x x 11 M No x x x 12 M No x x x x -3 -3 13 M Yes x x x 14 F No x x x x x 15 F No x x x x x 16 M Yes x x 17 M No x x x x x x x -3 -2 18 M No x x x x x x 19 M No x x x x x x
1 Legislation.

2 She had no initial background in farming but was married to a farmer. 3 They would appreciate to exchange practices but do not specify on what.

aware that the animal suffers. They deny it, so they do not agree with our reports…'.

And last, two inspectors considered that the dialogue was not possible:

Inspector 14: 'Farmers are only interested to know who denounced them to the vet services… They don't listen to our comments… It's difficult to discuss.'

These data show that the majority of farmers acknowledge that they need to be accountable for ensuring the welfare of the animals because they receive some financial support from the EU. The majority of farmers also agree that the inspections are carried out more professionally nowadays than at the beginning of the implementation of current regulation. However, a minority of them, especially those who struggle to comply with the regulation, have a more negative opinion of the inspections. These data are mirrored in the results of the inspectors' interviews that pointed out how the inspections can foster a dialogue with the farmers about improving animal welfare (i.e. the professionalism/expertise of the inspectors is acknowledged), but these dialogues are strongly affected by farmers' compliance with the regulation. For those farmers who are not complying with the regulation, the farm inspection is often not effective in helping them to change their practice because they have a negative opinion of the inspectors and do not engage with the inspectors' recommendations.

Composite perceptions of animal welfare common to farmers and inspectors

Farmers' views. More than half of the farmers (13 out of the 22) described the welfare of their animals by referring to the outward appearance of the animals that can be observed:

Box 1 Example of a dairy cattle farmer's perception of inspections and of some aspects of the legislation.

Farmer 5: 'A cow, when she is not well, you can see it from her face -They are like children, you can see [from the face] if there is a problem.' Farmer 6: 'We are used to watch our animals ... A cow , if she does not come to eat, if she stays alone, with a sad face…It is not normal…You can see it at first glance.'

Eleven farmers drew attention to the living conditions that they provided to animals as conducive to promoting animal welfare:

Farmer 4: 'If you provide straw, it is OK. It seems to me that if you have straw, enough feed, and protection, it is all OK for the animals.'

Farmer 10: 'If you give enough space, if you feed them correctly, that will be OK.'

Nine farmers mentioned the care they provide, sometimes stressing the importance of the relationship they have with their animals:

Farmer 6: [about a cow that was isolated] 'She is not punished .... It was difficult for her, because, as I explained she was sick ... So, as she is a good producing cow, we look after her ... We do not want her to be disturbed by the others… she must not slip, that's why we put lots of straw.' Farmer 9: 'We respect our animals, [we treat them] like pets.'

The fact that farmers reported establishing relationships with their animals is probably linked to the relatively small size of the farms (44 cows per farm on average in France in 2018, [START_REF] Agreste | Produits agroalimentaires/Bovins[END_REF]. Indeed, in our sample, only three herds were larger than 100 cows.

Even further, three farmers (all with small herds of 12, 13 and 38 cows) considered that animals have emotions or described their relation to animals as an emotional one. They used the same words to describe the animals' emotions as those used to describe human feelings:

Farmer 2: 'My cows, they are fond of me and I am fond of them [...] Sometimes it hurts me to see them going to the slaughterhouse.'

In addition, nine farmers considered that ensuring a good level of welfare of the animal is a prerequisite to good farming, stressing the link between animal welfare and production:

Farmer 20: 'If an animal is [feeling] well, the production will be OK.' Farmer 5: 'Anyway, if they were not well, it would not work: it is logical, if you want to produce, your cows must be in a good state of welfare.' Inspectors' views. When asked about animal welfare, the 19 inspectors generally mentioned legislative requirements and cited the EU directives, the French legislation or the checklist used for inspections. When asked to specify what they see as important, 14 of them mentioned the living conditions of animals, including the care animals received (6 of the 14 inspectors):

Inspector 2: 'The animal must have what it needs to feed itself, to be properly housed and move freely, naturally. To meet his physiological needs, in fact. And, of course, it must not be abused.'

Inspector 5: [What is animal welfare for you?] 'The keeping, breeding, transport in conditions that respect the physiological needs of the animals, avoiding any suffering. This includes the concepts: accommodation facilities (buildings and outdoor routes, vehicles) adapted to the species and well maintained, appropriate keeping conditions (tethering, loading, mixing of animals, etc.), watering and feeding in quality and quantity, provision of appropriate care.'

Eleven inspectors mentioned the state of the animals: Inspector 3: 'For me, a healthy and free cow, both in breeding and during transport.'

Inspector 19: 'When I see a healthy animal, ruminating, that's what animal welfare is all about. On the contrary, when on a farm it is a bit of a mess, the animals are in the shit, I know there is a problem.'

Eight inspectors put forward the issue of animal sentience. They stated that animals must not suffer (Inspectors 1,6,12,19) or that welfare embraces physiological and psychological issues (Inspector 11), or they cited the definition of animal welfare from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), which is based on the five freedoms and thus includes the freedom from fear, distress, pain and discomfort (Inspectors 8, 18).

Five inspectors mentioned the link between animal welfare and production. Three (Inspectors 2, 4, 10) considered that animal welfare is necessary to ensure good production. Two others (Inspectors 12, 13) warned about the risk that animals are 'over-exploited' for economic reasons, leading to reduced welfare:

Inspector 2: [Does the way you inspect farms comes from training or you apply what you are asked to?] "No, this is based on logic. I did a 'Higher Technician Certificate' in animal productions. If you want to have animals with a production that runs well, animal welfare makes sense."

Inspector 12: 'The state of the animal may deteriorate from time to time through the use and exploitation of animals for economic reasons.'

When asked about animal welfare, farmers and inspectors probably started out from their professional practice: observing animals for farmershence they put forward the appearance of the animalsand verifying compliance to the legislation for inspectorshence, they put forward European directives and the official checklist. Nevertheless, farmers and inspectors do not seem to differ from each other in their perception of what is important for the welfare of farm animals: both farmers and inspectors associate animal welfare with the state of the animals (their health and appearance), with their living conditions including the care they receive and, to a lesser extent, with their sentience. They acknowledge a link between welfare and production. These perceptions of animal welfare co-exist. For instance, Inspector 17 refers to the living conditions of animals, their state (here behaviour) and the care provided by farmers.

Inspector 17: 'As far as possible and depending on the species concerned and the farming system, animals should be kept to a minimum (space, premises, grazing area, feeding, watering, care...) and should express their natural behaviour. And the keepers of these animals should have a pragmatic and humane approach towards their animals, without falling into excessive empathy either, and should also consider their well-being (overwork, staff....) which can influence their own approach.' Legislation perceived as legitimate by farmers and inspectors with both parties questioning specific requirements Farmers' views. All farmers were aware of the existence of legislation to protect animals. When questioned about the legitimacy of that legislation, seven of them agreed with the very principle of legislation, i.e. protecting animal welfare by inspecting farms is justified because the farmers receive subsidies from the Common Agriculture Policy (see example in Box 2).

However, farmers did not always agree with specific points of the legislation. Four expressed doubts or explicitly disagreed on the benefit for animal welfare of the requirement to accommodate calves in group pens after 8 weeks of age (according to EU Directive 2008/119/EC (European Council, 2009)) or of not tethering cattle (which is still legal in the EU but on the condition that it does not lead to injuries (Directive 98/58/EC)):

Farmer 3: 'We do not understand the regulation about calves, it is too much. I think that if they have good feeding, there is no problem.' Farmer 5: 'They decreed that we could not chain the cows anymore, but before, when we were children, cows were tied all the winter and they were happy'.

Six farmers argued that France applies the legislation more strictly than other EU member states:

Farmer 3: 'The regulation in France…It becomes absurd… They are not adapted to the real life and we have more regulations in our country'.

Farmer 13: 'The regulation is not the same in France, even if we are in the European Union [meaning it is set at higher standards that penalise French farmers].' Inspectors' views. Several inspectors reported that farmers do not understand the reason for specific requirements, e.g. the absence of harmful objects such as metal or disused machines in pastures or the banning of tethering calves. Four of them mentioned that they themselves have difficulties in explaining the value of these specific points to the farmers:

Inspector 9: 'They [the farmers] don't understand why one must clear the pastures of everything if there has never been an accident. Anyway, we cannot always explain all items of the checklist.'

Inspector 2: 'Farmers do not understand why tethering of calves is banned, because they were used to this. I confess that I myself have trouble with it [the ban].'

Inspector 6: 'Farmers are puzzled over the regulation of calves. I saw beautiful calves tethered in good straw and in much better conditions than some kept in groups. And yet it is [the farmer with] tethered calves who is penalised….'

The very principle of a legislation to protect animals is thus not questioned but both farmers and inspectors challenge the pertinence of specific requirements, especially regarding the housing of calves (no tethering, collective pens).

Limitations of the method used for inspection highlighted by farmers and inspectors

Farmers' views. Nine farmers acknowledged that the inspections are done professionally, better than in the past, even though it may be burdensome for the farmer and the inspectors may be fussy (see example in Box 2).

By contrast, six farmers did not seem to value the method used for inspections. For instance, four farmers described the work of inspectors as merely 'ticking boxes':

Box 2 Example of a dairy cattle farmer's perception of the legislation to protect animals.

Farmer 4: 'They have boxes to fill in... They follow the checklist, that's all [they do not reflect on what is going on in the farm]. What they really think of the farm, it does not matter for the control, it is only important to fill in the form and tick boxes ... the inspector, she/he may be aware that an accident has happened (e.g. the breaking of a syringe while administering a drug, without intention to harm the animal) but she/he has to put in his report and fill in the box.' Inspector' views. When questioned about the inspection method, the inspectors spontaneously reported that they use the official checklist. One inspector only, however, reported that he exclusively followed that checklist.

Several inspectors reported that the method used for inspections does not allow them to assess animal welfare but only to detect cases of mistreatment. Three inspectors (4, 13, 18) made this point very explicit:

Inspector 18: 'We miss indicators on the body condition of animals. In addition, our checklist deals essentially with abuse and not with animal welfare.'

Inspector 4: 'It is always the problem with welfare assessment, I don't know if it's our job to assess welfare, rather malaise, animal protection, because we don't actually check welfare. I don't think I really check animal welfare, but it's rather in animal protection that we have problems, welfare problems: everything about dairy cows, about veal calves, it's complicated... In fact, I don't really check welfare. I think so.'

And three other inspectors (1, 5, 6) reported that the inspections can only have an impact in cases of extreme situations.

Most inspectors (13) confirmed that they use other criteria from their own experience in addition to the official checklist to assess the conditions of the animals. These inspectors explained that they first take an overview of the farm, looking at animals (all 13 inspectors) or their living conditions (10 of them), before dealing with the precise items on the checklist:

Inspector 5: 'The official method is the checklist but we have to learn to cope otherwise, because it is not sufficient, not accurate enough to have a right view of the level of animal welfare.'

Inspector 1: 'I start with an overall assessment of the farm, an overview and then I go into more detail. I perform the inspections on average, on batches of animals, then I look at the detail: first the general state of the animals (fattening), then their accommodation (if they are in the shit, if there is something that can hurt them, the watering and the feeding), then the detail (are there lame or injured animals).'

Inspector 2: 'I first look at the physical condition of the animal, its size depending on age, its body condition. Then its environment: is the pen properly mulched, well ventilated, if there is food and water…'.

Another inspector (16)who did not report adding her own criteria when inspecting farmsnevertheless expressed a wish that the inspection includes observations of the animals.

These inspectors reported that the checklist is something they have to use and that the training they received on how to conduct the inspections was only theoretical. They mentioned that they built their competences thanks to experience in inspecting farms, exchanges with other inspectors or by using their own agricultural background. Three of them (Inspectors 4, 12, 13) mentioned that the method they use to inspect farms isat least partlysubjective:

Inspector 4: 'I begin with an overall analysis of the farm, then I go through details and I try to have a look at each animal. But all is very subjective.'

Inspector 12: 'Animal welfare is a very subjective value, specific to the inspector; the inspection of a barn can be different from one person to another, for example, for ammonia emissions.' Nine inspectors (not necessarily the same as the 14 cited above) expressed a wish to benefit from training on how to assess animal welfare; three specified that they would appreciate being trained on the assessment of animals' living conditions (e.g. on feeding and housing) and three that they would appreciate knowing more about how to observe animals (behaviour, diseases):

Inspector 3: 'We would need a veterinary approach, to see the diseases, to go on a tour with veterinarians to see the disease and say that if the cow has that, one [the farmer] shouldn't do that. And there is a need for more training in welfare, but more practical: starting from the disease, find the causes and improve welfare.'

Inspector 14: 'The method in use is based on the checking of the equipment and of the feeds. Training on how to feed animal and on animal behaviour would be necessary.'

There seem to be opposite views among farmers about the effectiveness of the inspection method, with a large number of them considering that the current method is a box ticking exercise. Interestingly, the majority of the inspectors also pointed out the limits of using only the checklist imposed by their administration and explained that they use additional indicators, especially the body condition of the animals.

Discussion

This study provides new knowledge on how farmers and their inspectors perceive inspections to check compliance with the EU legislation to protect animals. We did not aim to get a representative sample of farmers and inspectors but rather to investigate the range of their perceptions in order to identify ways to make inspections more positively perceived and thus more likely effective in promoting changes for better animal welfare.

The farmers we interviewed seemed to agree with the principle of legislation to protect animals and on the need for inspections because there have been excesses in the past leading to poor animal welfare and because they receive public subsidies. This corroborates recent findings from [START_REF] Liu | Sheep farmers' attitudes to farm inspections and the role of sanctions and rewards as motivation to reduce the prevalence of lameness[END_REF] that farmers consider sanctions are fair as a deterrent to prevent poor welfare (in Liu et al.'s study, poor welfare corresponds to more than 10% lame sheep in a herd). In addition, the farmers we interviewed acknowledged the expertise of inspectors. Most farmers considered that the official inspections for animal welfare are useful or at least legitimate. However, as reported in previous research [START_REF] Hubbard | Do farmers and scientists differ in their understanding and assessment of farm animal welfare[END_REF][START_REF] Escobar | Paperwork and the decoupling of audit and animal welfare: the challenges of materiality for better regulation[END_REF], a significant proportion of farmers complained about the inspections, considering them 'too fussy' or even 'useless'.

French inspectors have to fill in a detailed form with 32 items to be checked on the environment in which the animals live (state of the pastures or of the buildings; equipment in use for feeding, watering or ventilation) and on the management of the animals (regular inspections, specific care to diseased animals…). Despite such a detailed checklist, some of the interviewed inspectors considered that the inspection method does not allow them to assess animal welfare but only to detect abuses of animals. Indeed, most inspectors reported using their own criteria in addition to those in the official checklist, especially criteria related to the physical condition of animals. This may explain the discrepancy observed by [START_REF] Lomellini-Dereclenne | Implementation of the European legislation to protect farm animals: a case study on French inspections to find solutions to improve compliance[END_REF] between the results of the checklist and the overall assessment that French inspectors make of a farm (see Introduction). In addition, several inspectors reported that the assessment is subjective, even when indicators are taken on the living conditions of animals, such as the ambience in a barn. This suggests that the official checklist is detailed but remains impreciseat least on some pointsand incomplete. There is thus a need to improve the method for inspection.

When questioned about their perceptions of animal welfare, both farmers and inspectors mentioned the physical condition of the animals including their emotionstheir living conditions, and the care they receive from the farmer. These perceptions co-exist, revealing that most farmers and inspectors acknowledge that welfare combines various aspects, some related to the state of the animals and others to their living conditions. Such a mix of outcome-based indicators (observation of animals) and resource-based indicators is commonly used as a broad framework for legislation. The five freedoms from the Farm Animal Welfare Council from which the EU legislation is largely derived combine the state of the animal and provision to reach that state, e.g. Freedom from hunger and thirst (state of the animals) by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour (provision) (Farm Animal Welfare Council, 1992). The same is observed in the definition of welfare by OIE or proposed as a framework to design a Canadian legislation to protect animals (World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), 2011, [START_REF] Fraser | Toward a harmonized approach to animal welfare law in Canada[END_REF]. Such commonalities on the definition of animal welfare open possibilities to set up indicators that would be agreed by both farmers and inspection services (including their supervising body that in France is the Ministry of Agriculture).

Both farmers and inspectors valued observations of animals as a means to assess their welfare. Such indicators are not explicitly mentioned in the official checklist. A resource-based requirement may nevertheless be checked by animal-based indicators [START_REF] Lundmark | Content and structure of Swedish animal welfare legislation and private standards for dairy cattle[END_REF]. For instance, regarding the items 'building materials not harmful to animals' and 'no sharp edges likely to harm animals', one can check if animals are not injured. In addition, terms used in the French current inspection methods are vague (e.g. 'quality of ambient air' (gases and dust)) and so open to subjectivity and to criticism from producers [START_REF] Grandin | Implementing effective standards and scoring systems for assessing animal welfare on farms and slaughter plants[END_REF][START_REF] Bilchitz | When is animal suffering'necessary[END_REF]. Vague concepts, however, may result in inspectors using common sense rather than adhering to strict requirements. In the present case, animal-based indicators may be closer to common sense.

The value of animal-based indicators is acknowledged by many scientists as well as official bodies such as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the EU Commission (EFSA AHAW Panel (EFSA Panel on Animal Health and Welfare), 2012, European Commission, 2012) on the ground that they are closer to the welfare as experienced by an animal, whereas indicators taken of resources or of the care provided to animals are only risk factors for welfare [START_REF] Keeling | Welfare quality(R) principles and criteria[END_REF]. There is, nevertheless, a low level of adoption of animal-based indicators at a practical level, especially in the legislation (EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), 2015). For instance, in the UK and Sweden, inspectors that check compliance with EU legislation or to assurance schemes (the 'Assured Dairy Farms' scheme of Red Tractor, the Organic schemes of the Soil Association in the UK and the standards of the dairy company, Arla Foods, in Sweden) base their assessment essentially on resource-based indicators [START_REF] Hedman | Non-compliance and follow-up in Swedish official and private animal welfare control of dairy cows[END_REF][START_REF] Lin | Use of welfare outcome information in three types of dairy farm inspection reports[END_REF]. [START_REF] Keeling | An analysis of animal-based versus resource-based comments in official animal welfare inspection reports from organic and conventional farms in Sweden[END_REF] found that inspectors using animal-based indicators made similar requests for improvement and felt use of such indicators may not only make the assessment more relevant but also lead to more consistency between inspectors.

According to EFSA (2015), the lack of use of animal-based indicators may come from a lack of homogeneous definitions of such measures. EFSA therefore urges for standardization of the terminology and methods to record animal-based measures. The lack of use of animalbased indicators may also come from a lack of experience in using such indicators.

Although the inspectors we interviewed had received theoretical training before they started inspecting farms, this training seemed insufficient. The majority of inspectors reported that they gained competences through experience, exchanges with other inspectors or by using their agricultural background. Also, they would like to receive more practical training (on how to observe animals, on feeding requirements or on housing). In recent years, protocols were developed for the assessment of the welfare of cattle, goats, horses, pigs or poultry and they allow a very good consistency between assessors, as long as these receive adequate training [START_REF] Blokhuis | Improving farm animal welfare -Science and society working together: the welfare quality approach[END_REF][START_REF] Croyle | Training method for animal-based measures in dairy cattle welfare assessments[END_REF][START_REF] Sommerville | A standardised equine-based welfare assessment tool used for six years in low and middle income countries[END_REF][START_REF] Vieira | Inter-observer reliability of animal-based welfare indicators included in the animal Welfare ndicators welfare assessment protocol for dairy goats[END_REF]. These protocols, that generally mix animal-based and resource-based indicators, could form the basis for inspectors to gain competences.

Several of the interviewed inspectors reported that they take an overview of the animals and their living conditions on arrival at a farm before considering in detail the checklist they have to fill in. The benefit of such an overall approach before going into detail is confirmed by the study from [START_REF] Czycholl | An indication of reliability of the twolevel approach of the AWIN welfare assessment protocol for horses[END_REF] on the assessment of horse farms. Such a practice would certainly benefit the current inspection method.

Negative perceptions of inspections may also come from disagreement on specific requirements of the legislation to protect animals. In our study, both farmers and inspectors expressed doubt about the benefit of some provisions, such as the restriction on tethering animals. When people know regulatory requirements only through official inspections, these requirements are more likely to be seen as constraints, especially when farms are found not compliant. In addition, experiencing an inspection without knowing the rulemaking process for EU animal welfare regulations and the very basis of the requirements may lead to the demonization of the institution held responsible for all these 'evils' (in the case of animal welfare regulations, this is often the EU). By contrast, when the rule is known, approved and recognised as legitimate, compliance with them is higher [START_REF] Uphoff | Improving international irrigation management with farmer participation: getting the process right[END_REF]. EU directives to protect animals result from scientific reports that include scientific and, in general, also technical knowledge from field actors (see for instance the report on the welfare of calves by [START_REF] Algers | Opinion on "The risks of poor welfare in intensive calf farming systems. An update of the Scientific Veterinary Committee Report on the Welfare of Calves[END_REF]. Understanding the bases of legislative requirements would make inspectors more confident in their inspections, including communicating non-compliances to farmers, and farmers more committed to implement changes in their practices.

In conclusion, it is not the inspections per se, but how they are currently conducted that leads to farmers' negative perceptions. In the case of checking the cross-compliance of cattle farms with the EU Directive 98/58/ECthat contains general requirements whatever the speciesa close dialogue between the administration that put in place the inspection process (in France, the central services of the Ministry of Agriculture), the farm inspectors (in France, the regional services of the Ministry), the farmers, and animal welfare scientists would help to design an inspection method that better fits the purpose of ensuring animal welfare. Exchanges of experience between inspectors and practical training would certainly reinforce inspectors' expertise and confidence. We also suggest introducing animal-based measures to check animal welfare to increase the confidence in inspections by both farmers and inspectors. Last, inspectors play a crucial role in explaining the requirements of the legislation and the results (of the inspection) to farmers in order to motivate them to improve their compliance to legislative requirements to protect animals and in turn, the welfare of the animals on their farms. To play this role, however, inspectors should themselves be confident about the legislation itself, e.g. by having received sufficient information on the rationale behind the legislation.

Table 1

 1 Checklist used by French inspectors for cattle farms.

	Area	Item
	Accommodation Protection against adverse weather and predators when
		outdoors
		Outside enclosures clear of harmful objects such as metal or
		plastic scraps or disused machines
		Outside enclosures well delimited
		Building materials not harmful to animals
		Equipment and building materials easy to clean and disinfect
		No sharp edges likely to harm animals
		Floors allowing waste disposal
		Quality of ambient air (gases and dust)
		Temperature and humidity
		Intensity and cycle of daily lighting (if artificial lighting is used)
	Equipment	Feeding and watering devices designed to avoid contamination
		Feeding and watering devices designed to avoid competition
		between animals
		Adequate functioning of feeding and watering devices
		Functioning of ventilation devices (if artificial ventilation is
		used)
		Functioning of the back-up ventilation system and system
		alarms (if artificial ventilation is used)
		Daily check of equipment
	Staff	Knowledge and qualifications
		Adequate staff numbers
	Management	Frequency of inspections of the animals
		Lighting suitable for animal inspections
		No mutilation (male castration or dehorning after 4 weeks of
		age without anaesthesia)
		Farming practices avoiding severe or long-lasting pain or harm
		If in use, tethering systems allowing basic behaviours
		Prompt treatment of ill or injured animals
		No ill or injured animals left without proper care
		Isolation of ill or injured animals
		Consultation of a veterinarian when needed
	Resources	Quantity and quality of feeding
		Frequency of feeding
		Quantity, quality and frequency of watering
		Safety of drugs administered to animals (excluding
		prescriptions by a vet)
	Documents	Farm records compliant with legislation

Table 2

 2 Information on the farmers interviewed and the themes they addressed.

	Farmer	Inspections	Animal welfare	Legislation

1 Including a good human-animal relationship.

Table 3

 3 Information on the inspectors interviewed and the themes they addressed.

	Inspector	Inspection			Animal welfare		Legis. 1	Method			Training
	No. Gender Background	Need for	OK on	No	Animal	Living	Care Human-animal	Sentience Production Disagreement	Checklist	Enrichment by	Enrichment by	Living	Animals'
	in farming	dialogue	good	dialogue	state	conditions	relationship	with some	only	looking at living	observing	conditions	observation
			farms	possible				aspects		conditions	animals
	1

Acknowledgements

We thank the farmers and the inspectors who gave their time for the interviews, and we are grateful to the students who carried out the interviews, namely Anne-Cécile Meyer Warnod, Cecile Adam, Philippe Ambroise, Heidi Beaudoin, Bénédicte Beneult, Amal Boutaleb, Coraline Chamoret, Sandy Lecoq-Espellargas and Laure Paget, and offer our thanks to Frédéric Mougeot and Anne-Claire Lomellini-Dereclenne who supervised their work. We thank Diane Bowden for editing the English writing. I. Veissier's work is supported by the French government IDEX-ISITE initiative 16-IDEX-0001 (CAP 20-25).

Financial support statement

Veissier's work is supported by the French government IDEX-ISITE initiative 16-IDEX-0001 . A.C. Lomellini-Dereclenne received a grant from the French Ministry of Agriculture (FCPR programme -Formation Complémentaire par la Recherche).

Data and model availability statement

Not applicable.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.animal.2020.100038

Ethics approval

Not applicable.

Author ORCID's

Isabelle Veissier : 0000-0002-8497-5395; Mara Miele : 0000-0002-5774-2860; Luc Mounier : 0000-0003-1083-8563.

Declaration of interest

None.