Can we measure human-animal interactions in on-farm animal welfare assessment?

Research has documented the effect that stockmanship has on animal welfare and shown that rough handling of animals can make them fearful of people. Interest has arisen in using measures of animals' responses to people in on-farm welfare assessment. In this article, we discuss some of the unresolved issues that lead us to doubt whether current measures of animals' responses to people can be used effectively in on-farm welfare audits. These include: uncertainty as to the best type of measure to be used, the low level of reliability of some tests, difficulties in establishing a clear cut-off point, and questions about the validity of the measures arising from effects due to the identity of the test person, the location of the test, the influence of motivations other than fear, and poor correspondence with type of handling actually used on farms.