56 | Animal Welfare: Risk Assessment little point in listing the freedoms, because the species needs are a much more accurate way to decide upon what should be provided to ensure good welfare Further Reading Broom, D M 1988 Needs, freedoms, and the assessment of welfare Applied Animal Behaviour Science 19: 384–386 Broom, D M 2003 The evolution of morality and religion Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Broom, D M., and A F Fraser 2007 Domestic animal behaviour and welfare, 4th ed Wallingford: CABI Webster, J 1995 Animal welfare: A cool eye towards Eden Oxford: Blackwell Donald M Broom ANIMAL WELFARE: RISK ASSESSMENT Many people who are interested in the assessment of animal welfare want to use a science-based approach Indeed, such science-based analyses will likely become the major way in which future legislation will be formulated This trend is already obvious in the European Union (EU) Risk analysis is one way to quantitatively study animal welfare Risk analysis comprises three parts: risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication This essay deals only with risk assessment Risk assessment is a systematic, scientifically based process to estimate the probability of exposure to a hazard, and the magnitude of the adverse welfare effects (that is the consequences in terms of severity) of that exposure The aim is to analyze the risk of animal suffering, that is, poor welfare, in a quantitative or semi-quantitative fashion depending on the type of data available Conversely, a similar approach could be used to make an assessment of the likelihood of good welfare Hazards are identified as events or circumstances occurring in an animal’s life that may result in adverse effects for an individual animal For example, concrete floors may result in lameness for a dairy cow; lack of space may lead to stereotypic behavior for a captive animal; crowding of fish during capture or grading may lead to scale loss and other superficial injuries; misuse of a captive bolt (also called a cattle gun, which is used to stun cattle prior to slaughter) may cause pain by not inducing immediate unconsciousness It may also be possible to characterize the hazard more precisely in order to define its quality or quantity in some way (e.g., the nature of concrete floor surface, power of the captive bolt, exact size of floor area) The consequences of being exposed to the defined hazard are analyzed in terms of the intensity and duration of the adverse effect(s) being suffered by an individual animal The combination of intensity and duration (severity) is then expressed in some way as the magnitude of the severity The likelihood of the severity occurring is also assessed or calculated depending on the quality and type of data available, and assessors are asked to give maximum, minimum, and most likely incidence While the above considerations refer to an individual, it may be necessary to know how commonly it happens, that is, the exposure of a population of animals to the hazard, for example, in the national herd, or in a trading area such as the United States or European Union The data are also analyzed for their degree of reliability or uncertainty/certainty, as information may vary from a metanalysis at one extreme (low uncertainty/high