Sub-project 3
To define integrated, knowledge-based, practicable species-specific strategies to improve farm animal welfare.
The primary aim of Sub-project 3 is to develop and test practical strategies for improving the welfare of farm animals. Potential strategies may include both environmental and genetic approaches aimed at minimising the elicitation and expression of harmful behavioural and physiological states, providing animals with a safe but stimulating environment, and improving human-animal relationships through appropriate training schemes for stockpersons. These remedial strategies will be applied in situations that are known to cause consumer concern as well as in those situations where earlier studies have revealed welfare problems. This effort will thereby help producers to achieve a high on-farm welfare status.
Viable remedial strategies must satisfy both welfare and economic requirements. They must also be practicable, i.e., affordable and easy to implement by the farmer and/or breeding company. Practical solutions do not necessarily imply the exclusive adoption of free-range systems or of extensive, organic farming. Intensive forms of livestock farming may also safeguard the animals’ welfare, providing that they meet their most important needs.
Sub-project 3 will be divided into 6 Work Packages, each addressing a particular welfare problem: handling stress, harmful traits, injurious behaviours, lameness, neonatal mortality, and social stress. These areas represent key welfare problems that are perceived as important by the European consumers and they offer the potential to greatly improve animal welfare through innovative, high quality scientific research.
Work package 3.1 Minimizing handling stress
Work package 3.2 Genetic solutions to welfare problems
Work package 3.3 Eliminating injurious behaviours
Work package 3.4 Reducing lameness in cattle and broilers
Work package 3.5 Minimizing neonatal mortality in pigs
Work package 3.6 Alleviating social stress
