Introducing the aWISH project: animal welfare indicators at the slaughterhouse

The objective of aWISH (animal Welfare Indicators at the SlaughterHouse) is to develop and offer a cost-efficient solution to evaluate and improve the welfare of meat-producing animals at a large scale, across Europe. This approach will be developed and evaluated in close collaboration with all actors involved, from primary producers up to policy makers and citizens. At the heart of the aWISH solution is the automated assessment at the slaughterhouse of complementary animal-based indicators for monitoring welfare on-farm, during (un)loading, transport and slaughter. Besides that, existing or routinely collected data (slaughterhouse data, antibiotics usage, farm data, etc.) and needed technologies on-farm or on-transport to complement the measurements at slaughter will be exploited. Piloting and development activities will be done in 6 broiler chicken and fattening pig production chains across Europe (FR, PL, ES, NL, AT, RS), using a lean multi-actor approach, in order to test and validate the project results. Novel sensor technologies and artificial intelligence algorithms will be developed, and a feedback tool and interface will allow each actor in the chain to get direct feedback of each slaughter batch, visualize trends and benchmark animal welfare
outcomes. An Animal Welfare Indicator Catalogue will disseminate all validated indicators and standardized data collection methods. From the pilot data, animal welfare initiatives taken at operator, chain, regional or national level
will be assessed alongside their environmental and socio-economic impact at operator and sector level. Next to that, 9 Best Practice Guides will be developed to improve key welfare issues in pigs and broilers, and to help external actors
deploy the aWISH technologies and feedback tool. How the feedback loop guides and motivates each party to take actions to improve animal welfare will be tested in a longitudinal study, and the needs, perceptions and barriers of all
actors from farm to fork incl. the consumer will be researched to maximize impact of the aWISH results. aWISH is a 4-year Horizon Europe project (nr. 101060818) starting autumn 2022 with 24 partners across the EU.

ISBN:978-90-8686-385-3

Publication year:2022