In the Welfare Quality® assessment protocol for broilers, the touch test is included to assess the human–animal relationship in the flock. The test is designed to measure the animals’ fear of humans, assuming that broilers will withdraw from the observer if they are fearful. However, many broilers close to slaughter age have impaired walking ability, and the results from the touch test may thus be biased by lameness and poor leg health. As the touch test is currently being used in several countries to assess human–animal relationship in broilers, there is an urgent need to examine this potential relationship for a further validation of the test. In the present study, fear of humans was assessed in 50 randomly selected Norwegian broiler flocks, using the touch test as described in the Welfare Quality® protocol for ty broilers. Leg health was assessed by examining the gait of 150 random birds in each of the flocks, using a six-point gait score scale from 0 to 5. The coefficient for the relationship between touch test score and gait score was 0.034 (P<0.001), indicating that the animals express less fear as assessed by the touch test when the gait scores increase. This implies that the touch test may be confounded by impaired walking ability and therefore might be a suboptimal method of assessing fear of humans and human–animal relationship in broilers. In conclusion, the results from this study suggests that the touch test must be further validated in broilers and perhaps be replaced with a fear test that doesn’t rely on walking ability.

The aim of this paper is to provide up-to-date information about the status of broiler production in Flanders (the northern region of Belgium) and the opinion of Flemish broiler producers on animal welfare. Our review revealed that intensification of Flemish broiler production has continued, as characterised by a decreasing number of production plants with up-scaled production. Results of a quantitative survey of Flemish broiler producers showed that the typical broiler house is 21 years old and houses 35,000 mixed-sex Ross broilers indoors on wood shavings or straw. The commonly-used modal management implies thinning one-fifth of the flock at the age of 35 days. The remaining broilers are slaughtered when they are 42 days old and weigh an average of 2.4 kg. The median unassisted mortality rate is 2% and another 0.5% are culled. Further scaling-up of production units is not viewed favourably by producers, particularly as related to consumer acceptance. Producers state they place great importance on animal welfare and do not agree that broiler welfare is poor. A small minority of producers plan to invest in improving broiler welfare in the near future. They see few advantages in paying more attention to broiler welfare or providing outdoor access to improve their public image and consumer acceptance. Producers define animal welfare mainly in terms of good health, feeding and housing and consider aspects that relate to the birds’ ability to express appropriate behaviour as less important. We discuss how this concept of ‘animal welfare’ corresponds to that reported by other people with farming backgrounds. Unfortunately this belief contradicts the perception of citizens and consumers and the assumptions underlying the proposed European standards for monitoring farm animal welfare as developed by the Welfare Quality® consortium.