Enhancing animal welfare on farm.
WELFARECHECK™ is a practical, veterinarian‑led tool that helps Australian cattle producers develop farm‑specific animal welfare plans aligned with Livestock Production Assurance (LPA) requirements.
Designed for use by Australian Cattle Veterinarians in consultation with their clients, WELFARECHECK™ guides structured discussions to identify, assess and manage key animal welfare risks on individual farms. It supports producers to demonstrate proactive, higher‑standard welfare management recognised by processors, industry and the wider community.
The program documents how welfare risks—defined in the Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Cattle—are managed, going beyond simple compliance checklists. Instead, WELFARECHECK™ records practical details, emergency plans and continuous improvement actions relevant to each farming operation.
WELFARECHECK™:
- Supports compliance with the LPA animal welfare requirements
- Embeds the full Cattle Standards and Guidelines
- Identifies and documents major welfare risks and mitigation strategies
- Produces a practical on‑farm resource for staff and emergencies
- Is a planning tool, not an audit—there is no pass or fail
By focusing on risk awareness, documentation and improvement rather than enforcement, WELFARECHECK™ enables meaningful welfare planning with no conflict of interest for veterinarians.
WELFARECHECK™ helps producers demonstrate a proactive, higher standard of animal welfare management recognised by industry, processors and the public.
The WELFARECHECK software is available to vets only
Plans vs Audits
It is important to note that in this context, a plan is not an audited quality assurance program. Rather, plans should document the risks that have been considered, the level to which these risks are controlled on the individual farm, and any plans to reduce the level of risk.
This is an important concept because producers do not pass or fail their plans, and there is no conflict of interest for the vet involved because they are not being asked to enforce or assess the components within the plan but rather to identify major risks and help devise plans to reduce them.