aWISH – Animal Welfare Indicators at the Slaughterhouse

Project aim: The main objective of aWISH is to develop and offer the capacity to evaluate and improve the welfare of meat-producing livestock throughout Europe via automated monitoring of animal-based welfare indicators at the slaughterhouse in order to give feedback and advice on best practices to those responsible for the various stages of production (farmer, catching team, transporter, slaughterhouse). This approach will be developed and evaluated in close collaboration with all actors involved, from primary producers up to policymakers and citizens.
About the project: At the heart of the aWISH project (Animal Welfare Indicators at the Slaughterhouse) is the large-scale, automated welfare monitoring of animal-based indicators at the slaughterhouse, that are related to welfare on-farm, during (un)loading, transport, and slaughter. Novel sensors will be developed and tested to measure these indicators, so data can be collected continuously and automatically. The aim is then to use this data to give feedback and advice on best practices to those responsible for the broilers and pigs throughout their lifetime (farmer, catching team, transporter, slaughterhouse). This approach will be developed and evaluated in close collaboration with all actors involved, from the livestock farmers up to policymakers and citizens.

BioSense role on the project: BioSense is the leader of Work Package dedicated to technology development and large-scale piloting – to organize six pilots, i.e. chains of business operators across EU where there are novel technology development and large-scale data collection for measuring AW and socio-economic and environmental impacts. Biosense role is to facilitate the entire journey of the pilot sites from conceptualization of the plans through assistance in implementation and following up on sites’ results.The main tasks of Biosense here is to prepare the pilots, the installations and technologies and establish an implementation plan and timeline; set up standardized data collection protocols, data sharing agreements, organize data exchange with consortium partners; support the pilots by finding synergies and joint activities between them; serve as a facilitator between other work packages and pilots; monitor and evaluate activities, extracting validation results, KPIs and lessons learned of pilots.