Can the good example set by your peers help to motivate improved welfare on dairy farms? New work in the UBC Animal Welfare Program has been examining the use of benchmarking as a service for farmers and a vehicle for engagement on issues of cow comfort and lameness. A new paper, entitled “Benchmarking cow comfort on North American freestall dairies: lameness, leg injuries, lying time, facility design and management, for high producing Holstein dairy cows” describes a UBC program recently applied on US dairy farms in CA, NY, PA, and VT in conjunction with Novus International Inc. The results show considerable variation among farms in lameness and leg injury prevalence as well as facility design and management. In each region there were a number of farms with very low prevalence of lameness and injuries, suggesting great opportunities for improvement on other farms.