Pathway to animal welfare quantitative risk assessment: piloting a standardised collection of Animal Based Measures in pigs
Programme Category
Programme Name
Programme Description
Build the European food safety knowledge ecosystem, ensuring safe food as the basis for healthy diets and sustainable food systems.
Identifier Code
Call
Summary
The scope of this call is to select (existing and new) animal-based measures (ABMs) and related management-, resources- and environmental-based (so called ‘context’) data from sows and piglets and from different housing systems and practices, including slaughter, to collect in the field on a large scale and in a harmonised way across EU MSs. These data are to be used for developing a freely accessible prototype Database for analysing the correlation between ABMs and related context data and enabling future quantitative risk assessment of the welfare on-farm of sows and piglets.
Detailed Call Description
The aim of this grant procedure is to conclude with a direct agreement for the execution of specific tasks over a clearly defined period as outlined in this call for proposals.
The overall purpose of the call for proposals is to pilot a harmonised and large-scale collection of welfare data from sows and piglets across EU MSs for enabling future quantitative risk assessment of the welfare of sows and piglets on farm. This activity is divided in 2 main parts:
- to identify a set of (existing and, eventually, also new) ABMs and related context data used for assessing the welfare on farm of sows and piglets that can be collected in the field (on farm and, from culled sows, at slaughterhouses) on a large scale and in a harmonised way across several EU MSs, considering the different housing systems and practices, and
- to develop a freely accessible and online-based database that contains the information on the selected ABMs and related context data collected from sows and piglets directly from the field. Data collection will be done following a well-defined protocol implemented by trained field evaluators.
For this specific call, it is worth specifying that:
- the data collection should be organised considering, but not exclusively, the housing systems and practices, the highly relevant welfare consequences, the ABMs, including, for the sows, the ABMs for collection at slaughterhouses to monitor the level of welfare on farm, and the exposure variables (factors) identified and described in the EFSA 2022 Scientific Opinion on the welfare of pigs on farm (EFSA AHAW Panel, 2022);
- the welfare data to collect are on ABMs and the related management-, resource- and environmentbased (MB, RB, EB) data (so called ‘context data’) as defined in EFSA Guidance for Risk assessment in AW (EFSA AHAW Panel, 2012b22) and in the roadmap (Paulović et al., 2024).
The primary goal is to develop a freely accessible, online-based database and to assist EFSA in analysing correlations between ABMs and related contextual data, thereby enhancing EFSA’s capacity to respond to forthcoming inquiries from the European Commission, the European Parliament, or MSs.
Objective 1: Identify and select ABMs and related management-, resource- and environment-based context data for assessing on-farm welfare of sows and piglets.
Objective 2: Develop a prototype database populated with ABMs and context data collected from the field on a large scale across EU MSs following a protocol and testing its effectiveness.
Call Total Budget
Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan
The project to be supported under this Call is co-financed by EFSA at maximum 90% of the total eligible project costs.
EFSA intends to fund one proposal under this Call.
Thematic Categories
- Agriculture - Farming - Forestry
- Environment and Climate Change
- Other Thematic Category
- Research, Technological Development and Innovation
Eligibility for Participation
- International Organisations
- NGOs
- Non Profit Organisations
- Other Beneficiaries
- Private Bodies
- Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
- State-owned Enterprises
Eligibility For Participation Notes
Applicants (coordinator and partner in the consortium) must be included in the Article 36 list of eligible organisations. Applications made by consortium in which partners are not on the Article 36 list will be excluded.
Proposals submitted by consortium:
- the Applicant submits the proposal to EFSA on behalf of the consortium. The applicant is the leading entity of the consortium. There can be only one applicant per application.
- The Partner is the other entity in the consortium. There can be a minimum of one partner or more partners.
Proposals must be submitted by a consortium of at least 4 eligible organisations. One of the partners must be identified in the proposal as the consortium leader. The applicant (consortium leader) is responsible for identifying consortium partners.
If you are searching for consortium partners, please contact your Focal Point.
On the proposal submission deadline, both the applicant and any partners in the consortium must be listed as competent organizations. This designation must be in accordance with Article 36 of Regulation (EC) 178/2002 and Commission Regulation (EC) 2230/2004, as designated by the Member States.
Call Opening Date
Call Closing Date
EU Contact Point
For any further information or guidance, you can contact EFSA’s KNOW Unit at: Cooperation.Article36@efsa.europa.eu.