Document type : presentation sheet of a European Commission H2020 research project
Excerpt: In Europe, especially in harsh environmental regions, breeding small ruminants (SRs) like sheep and goats constitute a significant source of meat, milk and wool. But SR farmers lack modern improvements in efficiency, performance and welfare to meet their needs. The development of novel, appropriate technologies can enhance productivity levels and reduce costs. The EU-funded TechCare project will adopt a multi-actor approach to identify special SR welfare issues and design innovative technologies to monitor and improve SR welfare management at individual or flock/herd level, along the value chain. The project goal is to create and validate demand-driven and innovative welfare solutions at all stages of SR production.
Objectives: TechCare is a multi-actor approach project aiming to develop appropriate business models using innovative technologies to improve welfare management for all EU small ruminant (SR) systems, to enable stakeholders to choose animal welfare-friendly products. SRs play a key socio-economic role in Europe, especially in harsh environments where innovative technology is not much implanted. SRs are often managed as a flock/herd, allowing only average welfare states to be considered. Innovative technologies are a unique opportunity to monitor and improve SR welfare management at the individual or flock/herd level, along the value chain.
Based on SR welfare state-of-the-art, TechCare will undertake a multi-actor approach to encapsulate stakeholders' expectations in terms of welfare and innovative technologies, and provide them with adapted solutions, in a co-design approach. TechCare will cover all stages of SR production and build novel welfare approaches to develop and validate tools, early warning systems, algorithms and indicators for efficient identification of welfare issues, including positive welfare, to include them in welfare management models. The innovative technologies identified in TechCare will pass different stages of validation, from prototyping to large scale studies. TechCare identified solutions will therefore be replicable and adapted to different SR systems, production purposes, and value chains, for improvement of SR welfare management EU-wide.
Business models will be constructed and validated with stakeholders. Dissemination, communication and exploitation materials will be produced and widely shared for easy use of TechCare solutions, ensuring their uptake and relevance to all sectors and stakeholders.
TechCare will offer a sustainable improvement of SR welfare management using innovative technologies along the whole value chain and across the EU, and will act as an example in terms of approach and solutions for other species and production systems.
Project resulting in an article on the Interbev website
