Beef industry stakeholder survey to determine which aspects of welfare should be assessed on-farm for welfare benchmarking (CSSHREC_067-20)

A producer-driven benchmarking system is being developed to assess the welfare state of beef cattle in pasture-based production systems. This stakeholder survey was conducted to determine which aspects of welfare the public think should be assessed in the benchmarking system, in order for it to meet the expectations of various industry stakeholders. A second part of the survey only targeted respondents that had owned or worked on a pasture-based beef property in the past 10 years. This part aimed to determine the feasibility for producers to self-collect some of the animal-based measures on farm and to understand which incentives would be required for producers to participate in a welfare benchmarking system. The benchmarking program will need to be feasible for producers to apply in order to be viable and must provide value to producers in order for it to be widely adopted by industry. \nLineage: An online survey was developed to address the aims of the study (see supporting documentation for a copy of the survey). The survey was made available through SurveyMonkey for one month from the 25th June to the 26th July 2020. The survey was distributed widely via social media platforms such as Facebook and the CSIRO twitter page, and in a more targeted manner through the RSPCA newsletter, cattle breed societies and beef industry producer groups. Surveys from those who did not complete any questions beyond the initial demographics were considered invalid and were removed. A total of 597 valid responses were received.