GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals should address all of the following areas of research in terrestrial livestock:

• Identification of the data and appropriate indicators that enable assessment of animal welfare on farms, during transport and at the time of slaughtering/killing;
• Development of innovative ways of automatically collecting data pertaining to welfare and related sustainable farming techniques;
• Standardisation of data collection for a population of operators along the supply chain;
•  Development of algorithms integrating heterogeneous data from a population of operators in order to evaluate the level of animal welfare within the population concerned;
• Development of best practices associated with statistically meaningful improvements in animal welfare;
•  Evaluation of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of best practices for animal welfare, including marketability;
• Development of monitoring tools and smart models to improve the scope of the data collection both quantitatively (population size) and qualitatively (quality of data collected and impacts measured);
• Development of innovative ways to estimate the impact of past detrimental conditions on welfare.

The choice of the population of operators should take into account their economic and social relevance for the EU policy and regulatory framework, and potential animal welfare issues. The choice of data studied should take into account complementarity, frequency and ease of collection. It should also take account of the various dimensions of animal welfare (feed and water, comfort, health, behaviour, etc.).