About the project

This project is coordinated by Anna Valros, University of Helsinki, Finland

The aim of SOWtrack project is to select (existing and new) animal-based measures (ABMs) and related management-, resource- 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 harmonized way across EU MSs. These data are to be used for developing a freely accessible prototype Database for analyzing the correlation between ABMs and related context data and enabling future quantitative risk assessment of the welfare on-farm of sows and piglets.

The database will be essential for keeping track of how welfare standards change over time and can be used for risk assessment. The strength of this project builds on a very strong and experienced consortium covering countries representing a large part of the diversity of pig farming in EU.

The consortium partners represent countries from all geographical regions of the EU and include countries where pig production is a very large sector with highly developed intensive farms as well as countries where pig farming is still a very important part of farming, but where pig farms vary from large commercial units to backyard farming. The partner countries also represent a large diversity when it comes to housing systems and management traditions.

Project homepage

• Objectives

  The aim of SOWtrack project is to select (existing and new) animal-based measures (ABMs) and related management-, resource- 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 countries. 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 for sows and piglets. The database will be essential for keeping track of how welfare standards change over time and can be used for risk assessment.

  The strength of this project builds on a very strong and experienced consortium covering countries representing a large part of the diversity of pig farming in EU. The consortium partners represent countries from all geographical regions of the EU and include countries where pig production is a very large sector with highly developed intensive farms as well as countries where pig farming is still a very important part of farming, but where pig farms vary from large commercial units to backyard farming. An important prerequisite for inspectors and policy makers to use the standardized protocol will be to select ABMs, husbandry systems, management and context data that covers the variation seen in the farms across Europe, but at the same time remain feasible and efficient to use in practice. These protocols and databases should be easy to access and user friendly to navigate within.

  Through the partners involved we further have access to already existing tools for building the repository of ABMs and the database for field data collection. With a consortium consisting of pig experts from 10 different European countries the resulting database is likely to be used far into the future and set a golden standard for collecting welfare data. The University of Helsinki will coordinate and manage the consortium, as well as lead sub-objectives which specifically need coordination between partners. IHA, NMBU, who will lead objective 1 which covers the developmental phase of making a list of relevant ABMs and context data, has a long track record of developing and validating ABMs for pig welfare as well as direct connections to already existing data bases who will provide the starting point for the repository. The University of Barcelona leads Objective 2 with their specific expertise on on-farm data collection systems.

NMBU participant

Project partners

University of Helsinki (Finland) (Coordinator)
Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway)
Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain)
University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
BOKU University (Austria)
Warsaw University of Life Sciences (Poland)
The University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine (Romania)
French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (France)
Estonian University of Life Sciences (Estonia)
Wageningen University & Research (The Netherlands)