Aaron, this is a great idea. I strongly agree that bringing research closer to commercial farms is essential if we want findings that actually reflect what happens in practice, with much of what is produced in research settings (even those that try to mimick commercial practice) suffering from what we call the ‘healthy farm effect’. Commercial data capture the full messiness of real production, which is why it is so valuable.
External validity is not the only thing missing in welfare science. Most of what we know about animal welfare at commercial scale comes from single visits to farms, essentially a photograph of what happens. We need the video (longitudinal research). We need to know when different welfare problems start, how long they last, and how many animals are affected. In short, we need an epidemiology of animal welfare, and commercial farms are the only place where that can happen.
That said, for this to work, I believe a few things are needed:
Independence between funding and publication. In my experience working with industry-funded groups, there are often contractual or simply informal pressures (e.g. anticipation of future fundign) that discourage publishing unfavorable results . Agreements need to explicitly guarantee the right to publish regardless of outcome.
Independent analysis. Data collection can happen on farms, but analysis should be conducted or audited independently to reduce potential biases.
A clever design of incentives. Farmers should benefit from participating, but incentives shouldn’t promote selective reporting.
Standardization. The power of research on commercial farms will come from collecting consistents data and indicators across many farms, enabling large scale analyses with the proper statistical power and validity. This needs pre-defined protocols, clear definitions of variables and methods, preregistration where possible, and transparent data access. Without this, farm data risk being too messy or selectively reported.
With these safeguards, I believe research on farms will be of immense value. Farms are already generating huge amounts of data as you mentioned, one challenge now is creating the proper systems to use it .
Aaron, this is a great idea. I strongly agree that bringing research closer to commercial farms is essential if we want findings that actually reflect what happens in practice, with much of what is produced in research settings (even those that try to mimick commercial practice) suffering from what we call the ‘healthy farm effect’. Commercial data capture the full messiness of real production, which is why it is so valuable.
External validity is not the only thing missing in welfare science. Most of what we know about animal welfare at commercial scale comes from single visits to farms, essentially a photograph of what happens. We need the video (longitudinal research). We need to know when different welfare problems start, how long they last, and how many animals are affected. In short, we need an epidemiology of animal welfare, and commercial farms are the only place where that can happen.
That said, for this to work, I believe a few things are needed:
Independence between funding and publication. In my experience working with industry-funded groups, there are often contractual or simply informal pressures (e.g. anticipation of future fundign) that discourage publishing unfavorable results . Agreements need to explicitly guarantee the right to publish regardless of outcome.
Independent analysis. Data collection can happen on farms, but analysis should be conducted or audited independently to reduce potential biases.
A clever design of incentives. Farmers should benefit from participating, but incentives shouldn’t promote selective reporting.
Standardization. The power of research on commercial farms will come from collecting consistents data and indicators across many farms, enabling large scale analyses with the proper statistical power and validity. This needs pre-defined protocols, clear definitions of variables and methods, preregistration where possible, and transparent data access. Without this, farm data risk being too messy or selectively reported.
With these safeguards, I believe research on farms will be of immense value. Farms are already generating huge amounts of data as you mentioned, one challenge now is creating the proper systems to use it .