Close menu
Toggle menu

aWISH Stakeholder Workshop series | Twelve workshops, one conversation: engaging Europe on animal welfare

Between February 2025 and June 2026, the aWISH project ran a series of twelve stakeholder workshops that brought together over 600 participants in direct dialogue about the future of animal welfare in Europe's meat-producing livestock sector. This release brings the full series together.

Share This Post

Between February 2025 and June 2026, the aWISH project ran a series of twelve stakeholder workshops that brought together over 600 participants in direct dialogue about the future of animal welfare in Europe’s meat-producing livestock sector. Organised under Task 5.5 (Work Package 5) and led by partners across the consortium, the workshops ranged from online webinars and hybrid conferences to on-farm exchanges, high-level policy debates in Brussels, and international seminars — each addressing a different link in the farm-to-fork chain for pigs and broilers. Together they trace the project’s journey from understanding stakeholder needs, through validating sensor technologies and best practices, to shaping the pathways that will carry animal welfare indicators into policy and everyday practice. This release brings the full series together.

12 Workshops
Feb 2025 – Jun 2026		>600 Participants
Stakeholders across Europe		Organised by
Task 5.5 partners (WP5)

The series at glance

Spring 2025 — Listening to the value chain

The series opened by asking the people who live and work in the value chain what they actually need.

  • Value chain actors’ needs, perceptions & constraints (7 February 2025). Organised online by White Research, this first workshop gathered 35 professionals to review findings from stakeholder interviews and a large-scale EU consumer survey. Four priority themes emerged: financial viability (the cost of welfare measures for small farms was the single greatest barrier), consumer trust and labelling (affordability rated the most influential purchase factor at 4.6/5), regulatory fragmentation across Member States, and gaps in monitoring and data.
  • Detection and remediation through sensor technology (4 March 2025). Organised by Vetmeduni with Innotech and UAB, 39 stakeholders assessed automated welfare-monitoring systems from providers including ITAVI, CLK, BioSense, FBN and Innotech. The headline conclusion: business models matter as much as the technology, one size does not fit all, and AI-driven detection may ultimately outperform human observation in consistency and objectivity.
  • Broiler pre-slaughter phase (4 April 2025). aWISH’s first in-person event, a hybrid workshop at the VAC Ghent auditorium, drew 89 participants around the question ‘How do we catch and transport broilers in 2035?’. Organised by ILVO and Utrecht University, five working groups and a lively panel debate converged on four priorities: human factors are the number-one control point, crate and transport design should be standardised, technology and AI are viable long-term enablers, and regulation must enable rather than obstruct welfare improvement.

Autumn 2025 — Transport, biosecurity and welfare in tension

  • Improving broiler transport (2 October 2025). ITAVI hosted 45 participants online to present a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model that simulates airflow and temperature inside broiler transport trucks, allowing operators to test ventilation, loading density and truck-design interventions against heat stress without costly live trials. Discussion shaped the model’s next steps, from cold-weather applicability to the effect of empty cages and misting during loading.
  • Biosecurity meets animal welfare (26 November & 2 December 2025). Co-organised with the sister project BIOSECURE and led by Utrecht University, the fifth workshop ran as two linked sessions, one on pigs (40 participants) and one on broilers (29), tackling the real tension between disease-prevention measures and natural behaviours, such as restricting outdoor access. Rather than simply naming the conflicts, breakout groups co-created solutions around enrichment, outdoor access and genotype choice, laying the groundwork for a follow-up in-person meeting in Utrecht in May 2026.

Early 2026 — From policy to the farm

  • From indicators to implementation: pathways for EU welfare reform (14 January 2026). A high-profile workshop at ACE-Events in Brussels, organised by Eurogroup for Animals, brought 50 senior participants, including officials from DG SANTE and DG AGRI, MEPs and Member State representatives, to debate how welfare indicators move from evidence into law. Five conclusions stood out: indicators must be integrated into legislation rather than run parallel to it; EU harmonisation is essential and currently lacking; farmers must be supported, not burdened; multiple policy channels must work in concert; and appetite for continued engagement is strong.
  • Best practices in pig farming (27 January 2026). A dialogue between ten practitioners at Haus Düsse’s pioneering ‘barn of the future’, organised by the Thünen Institute and TiHo, focused on reducing tail biting so pigs can keep intact, curly tails. Participants pointed to genetics and stress management as the top levers, early observation and intervention as low-cost wins, and loading as an underappreciated welfare risk , but were unanimous that keeping curly tails ‘has to pay off’. The event sparked plans for a joint event with the Netzwerk Fokus Tierwohl farmer network.
  • From sensors to welfare — technology in the slaughterhouse (9 March 2026). Held as two parallel online sessions on the same day, this double workshop examined technology-based welfare assessment from complementary angles. The first session, led by UAB, addressed the challenges and opportunities of technology-based assessment and showcased project-developed detection systems, including corneal-reflex, lung-lesion and tail-length sensors, to 74 participants. The second session, led by the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), focused on the potential, challenges and practical aspects of actually implementing these technologies. Across both, participants ranked the factors that build trust in a welfare technology and pointed to the way forward: common European objectives, transparency in AI-model training, clear cost-benefit cases, and standardisation backed by science.
  • Value of indicators for labelling and certification (4 April 2026). Organised by IGBŻ PAN with Plukon, this workshop connected on-farm good practice for broiler welfare with the value of welfare indicators for labelling and certification. Alongside practical guidance on litter, stocking density, enrichment and biosecurity, participants were introduced to digital tools, the EBENE app and the ChickenCheck camera system, and a live slaughterhouse demonstration that showed welfare indicators being assessed in real operating conditions.

Summer 2026 — Reaching new audiences

  • Indicators for measuring animal welfare — Serbia (8 June 2026). At the 11th Seminar of Breeding Organisations of AP Vojvodina in Kladovo, the University of Novi Sad and the BioSense Institute introduced aWISH to 160 participants from the Serbian livestock sector. The presentation positioned animal welfare indicators within a national digitalisation drive and showcased the monitoring solutions developed jointly by BioSense and Carnex under Pilot 6.
  • How to communicate animal welfare (18 June 2026). Organised online by CONSULAI and FarmIN, around 35 participants explored one of the hardest parts of the welfare agenda: talking about it. A keynote by Catarina Stilwell (FarmIN) framed welfare as a complex, often polarised topic, and discussion turned on the gap between evidence and perception, the pressure of social media and misinformation, and the need to pair science with empathy and transparency.

Common threads across the series

Across twelve very different workshops, a consistent set of messages recurred:

  • Welfare has to pay off. From small-farm costs in the first workshop to the curly-tail premium debated in Germany, financial viability was named again and again as the decisive factor in whether welfare improvements are adopted.
  • Harmonisation and clear labelling. Stakeholders repeatedly called for EU-wide standards and simpler, transparent claims so that farmers compete on a level playing field and consumers can trust what they buy.
  • Human factors and training. Whether catching crews, farm staff or transport operators, the people in the chain emerged as a top control point, while attentiveness, skill and accountability matter as much as equipment.
  • Technology and AI, with a business case. Sensors and automated slaughterhouse monitoring promise more consistent, objective assessment, but only where the cost-benefit ratio works for users and providers alike.
  • Measuring welfare at the slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouse-based assessment recurred as the most objective and scalable way to reflect on-farm outcomes back to producers.
  • Communication and cooperation. Ultimately, welfare gains depend as much on dialogue, trust and collaboration across actors as on the underlying science.

What comes next

As aWISH moves towards its final outputs in 2026, the workshop series has built a durable, engaged network spanning producers, processors, technology providers, NGOs, veterinary and certification bodies, researchers and policymakers across Europe. The project’s closing deliverables draw directly on the insights captured across these twelve workshops. The conversations begun here are set to continue well beyond the project’s lifetime.

About aWISH aWISH (Animal Welfare Improvement Strategies for Healthy livestock) is a Horizon Europe project (GA No. 101060818) developing scalable, cost-efficient solutions to evaluate and improve the welfare of meat-producing livestock, pigs and broilers, across Europe. The project runs from 2022 to 2026 and is built on a multi-actor approach involving producers, processors, policymakers, NGOs, and citizens. www.awish-project.eu

For more information contact the coordinating team | ILVO | awish@ilvo.vlaanderen.be or akyriakidis@white-research.eu

Privacy Policy

Cookie Policy

Funded by the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission.
Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them.

Copyright © 2023 BioSense Institute. All rights reserved.

1. aWISH Introduction

We would like to invite you to participate in the aWISH Expert Panel, as we believe that your experience and knowledge will contribute greatly to a key consultation body of the project. aWISH is a 4-year project funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme. Before you decide to participate in the aWISH Expert Panel, please take the time to read this document carefully to understand what your involvement will be in our project’s activity. If there is anything you do not understand, please feel free to ask questions.

1.1 What is the aWISH project about?

In the EU, a challenge that still remains is to reconcile the social and moral demand for a high level of animal welfare with other pillars of sustainable livestock production. Indeed, 82% of Europeans believe that farm animals should be better protected than they currently are. A broad definition of animal welfare refers to the feelings and physical well-being of an individual animal. Broilers and pigs are the farm animals EU citizens care most about, and they are also the most important meat-producing animals in the EU and worldwide. Both pigs and broilers have significant welfare problems at all stages of production (on-farm, loading and transport, unloading and slaughter), leading a growing number of citizens to question the social license to produce. Ambitious and effective, but also practical and efficient solutions are needed. This is where the aWISH project comes in to fill this gap! The aim of aWISH is to develop and provide a cost-effective solution for assessing and improving the welfare of meat-producing livestock in Europe. The aWISH solution is based on the automatic monitoring of animal-related indicators at slaughter. The necessary technologies will also be developed to collect complementary data on farm or during transport. Pilot and development activities will be carried out in 6 broiler and fattening pig production chains across Europe using a lean multi-actor approach to test and validate the project results. A catalogue of animal welfare indicators will disseminate all validated indicators and standardised data collection methods. Best practice guides will be developed to improve key aspects of animal welfare in pigs and broilers and to help external stakeholders use aWISH technologies and tools. In this context, the aWISH project will set up expert panels that will be composed of representatives of actors from the entire farm to fork value chain across the EU. The expert panels will have the function to retrieve and share feedback on technology, processes, farming practices, industry, sector regulation and markets, as well as society and perceptions. In this way, stakeholder participation in expert panels could help initiate interdisciplinary dialogue, promote interaction with target groups and associations, and strengthen trust between different actors.

2. Useful Information

2.1 Is my participation voluntary and what does it involve?

Your participation in the aWISH project is entirely voluntary. If you decide to participate in an aWISH activity, we will ask you to sign an Informed Consent Form to collect and process your data. The project will last 48 months, but you will only participate for as long as you wish.

2.2 Purpose of personal data collection

As mentioned above, the expert panel will have the function to retrieve and share feedback on technology, processes, farming practices, industry, sector regulation and markets, as well as society and perceptions. In order to do this effectively, we need to process some of your personal data:
  • Your contact information
  • Demographic information (age, gender, country of origin)
  • Professional information (where do you work, what position do you hold, what is your area of expertise)
  • Personal opinions on the subject

2.3 What we will do with your data

The information you provide is confidential. Your consent form will be kept separate from the observations collected during the course of the project activity. We will share your data with other aWISH project partners involved in the data analysis and reporting process. Once the data is analysed, a report of the findings may be submitted for publication. The project's deliverables that will be derived by this activity will not include your personal data or any other information that could identify you. The results of this project activity may also be shared with representatives of the European Union (e.g. the Project Officer evaluating the project's or the reviewing EU agencies). Only broad trends will be reported and it will not be possible to identify any individuals.

3. Access, deletion of information or withdrawal of consent

Under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right to request to: (i) provide you with a copy of your data; (ii) correct your data if you believe they are inaccurate; (iii) erase your data; (iv) restrict or stop processing your data; or (v) provide your data in an appropriate format and transfer them to another organisation. In addition, you may withdraw your consent and therefore your participation at any time without consequence. Anonymous data already collected will be used as we cannot trace the information back to you. No further data will be collected or other procedures carried out in relation to your information. If you wish to have the personal data we hold checked, amended, corrected or deleted, or if you wish to withdraw your consent, you can contact the responsible partner listed below.

4. Contact Information

Partner name: WHITE RESEARCH SRL
e-mail: akyriakidis@white-research.eu

5. Informed Consent Form

I confirm that I understand that by ticking each box below I am consenting to this element of the study. I understand that it will be assumed that unticked boxes mean that I DO NOT consent to that part of the study. I also understand that by not giving consent for any of the elements, I may be deemed ineligible for participating in this project’s activity.
 

6. Declaration of Acceptance

I, the undersigned
acknowledge that I have read and agree to be bound by the aWISH Expert Panel Terms of Reference. I agree to participate in the aWISH Expert Panel in my individual capacity and, as such, may not assign or be substituted for any other person to perform the work without prior written agreement with the aWISH Expert Panel Consortium. I agree not to disclose any information given in the course of the Expert Panel’s work unless the aWISH Consortium agrees to releases me from this obligation, and to respects the confidentiality requirements. I declare that I fully and unconditionally accept my appointment as an aWISH Expert Panel member as described in the Terms of Reference. I agree that any contribution I make as an aWISH Expert Panel member may be used by the aWISH consortium for reporting purposes or to align project activities to the needs of relevant stakeholders. I consent to the processing of my personal data necessary for my participation in the aWISH Expert Panel.

Welcome to the awISH Project website

Before we dig in we would like to know a little more about you. Group that describes you the best is: