Risk assessment in animal welfare

Risk assessment provides decision makers an objective, repeatable and documented assessment of the risks posed by a particular action. There exist well established protocols created by the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) and Codex Alimentarius for assessing risk. Risk assessment is the first component of the risk analysis process, which also includes risk management and risk communication. This article is a brief introduction to the risk assessment approach in the animal welfare domain, which is based on the following successive steps: exposure assessment, consequence characterization and risk characterization. In this context, the risk is a function of the likelihood that animals will experience certain welfare consequences and the magnitude of those consequences, following exposure to a factor or exposure scenario, in a target population. Such an assessment may simultaneously include both negative (risk) and positive (benefits) welfare consequences. The concepts inherent in this approach are first described, then two examples are used to illustrate the implementation of the methodology.