Real Welfare Scheme Statistical Analysis

AHDB Pork is looking to procure statistical input to analyse data submitted from Real Welfare assessments performed under the Red Tractor assurance scheme since 2013 on an annual basis. The purpose of the statistical analysis is to:

1. Inform an annual report published by AHDB assessing change over time, trends and standardisation of data. The supplier will be required to attend an initial meeting with AHDB Pork prior to commencing the work to discuss requirements, and further meetings may be arranged once or twice a year as required.

2. In addition, the supplier may be required to be available for up to 10 days a year (to be mutually agreed in advance) for further consultation and advice.

3. The annual analysis to be carried out should be similar to that undertaken and detailed for the first three years of the Real Welfare Scheme (see https://doi.org/10.1017/S1751731117000246 and http://pork.ahdb.org.uk/media/273110/real-welfare-report-2017.pdf ) and allow for ongoing comparisons of the data and trends over time.

4. Also, in the interest of transparency, the contract will be required to prepare at least one manuscript for submission to an academic (open access) journal in 2019 (similar to https://doi.org/10.1017/S1751731117000246 ), or sooner by mutual agreement to a mutually agreed topic.

Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) collect data from their member farms in Scotland, which is considered equivalent to the Red Tractor assurance scheme. At present these data are held and owned by QMS Scotland. However, a confidentiality agreement between AHDB Pork and QMS is under development such that once this process has been finalised these data will be shared with AHDB Pork.

Therefore, once a confidentiality agreement is in place these data will require statistical analysis in-line with those outlined for the Red Tractor data and in the published Real Welfare Baseline Report (2013-2016) (see above). As these will be the first dataset from Scottish farms it will require the description of baselines figures as are outlined for the Red Tractor data in the published Real Welfare Report.

Additional information: Please email Claire Barber if you are interested in receiving further information regarding this tender opportunity.