DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18375874
title: INTAQT - Questionnaires used during interviews of broiler, dairy and beef farmers

description: This repository contains the questionnaires used during visits to broiler, dairy, and beef farms as part of the European H2020 INTAQT project (INnovative Tools for Assessment and Authentication of chicken meat, beef and dairy products’ QualiTies, FNR-05-2020 - Husbandry for quality and sustainability).

The purpose of the questionnaire was to collect detailed farm information about the production system to enable its characterisation and sustainability assessment, as well as to evaluate the linkages between the production system and product quality. The collected information included general farm characteristics (e.g. land area, land type, presence of other livestock, workforce), land management (e.g. fertilisation), and questions related to the livestock production of interest: herd structure (e.g. number and type of animals, breed composition, replacement rate), production and sanitary metrics (e.g. milk yield, slaughter weight, age at slaughter, mortality, vaccination, antibiotic use), housing conditions (e.g. indoor confinement, grazing period, free-range access), feeding strategies (e.g. feed composition, feed consumption, outdoor vs. indoor diets for cattle, different feed compounds and duration of feed phases for broilers), and animals bought, sold (value) and slaughtered each year. 

These questionnaires were used in Belgium, France, Italy, Poland and Switzerland for broiler farms, in France, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Switzerland for dairy farms, and in France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and The United Kingdom for beef farms. Prior to the visits, the questionnaires were translated into the language of the country. 

All three questionnaires include:



"METADATA" sheet explaining what contains every sheet of the excel file,

"Farm_data" sheet with questions about general farm characteristics (location, utilised agricultural area, other animals present on the farm, …),

"Crops_Grasslands" sheet with questions related to land including details regarding the type of cropland or grasslands and their management.


Additionally, there were animal product-specific sheets:

For the questionnaire for broiler farms:



"Broilers" sheet with question related to chicken production including production cycles, number of broilers, breed, production metrics, housing, compound feeds and feeding phases,

"Last30days" sheet with additional questions related to the 30 days before slaughter/sampling regarding specific events that could have occurred.


For the questionnaire for dairy farms:



"Dairy" sheet with questions related to dairy production including the herd structure, production metrics, housing conditions, average feeding in summer and in winter for dairy cows and replacement heifers,

"Last7days_1", "Last7days_2", "Last7days_3", "Last7days_4", "Last7days_5" sheets with questions asked the day of milk sampling to collect information related to herd and feeding managements linked to the milk sample. Samplings were spread throughout the year.


For the questionnaire for beef farms:



"Suckler_cow" sheet with questions related to herd structure, production metrics, housing conditions, average feeding in summer and in winter for suckler cows, replacement heifers, fattening and finishing cattle (only for beef farms with a suckler cow system),

"Fattening_finishing" with questions related to herd structure, production metrics, housing conditions, average feeding in summer and in winter for fattening and finishing cattle (only for beef farms with a fattening-finishing systems but without suckler cows).