News
Q2E on nutrition and tail biting
EURCAW-Pigs received a question on the relationship between nutrition and tail biting.
EURCAW-Pigs
News
News
Roadshow meetings continued in Romania, Spain and Poland
In 2024, EURCAW-Pigs continued with physical visits to Member States. Romania, Spain and Poland were visited, and delegates were 10-40 MS officials of the country where the Roadshow meeting was organised.
News
Fourth annual EURCAW-Pigs MS officials meeting
On the 7th and 8th of October 2024, EURCAW-Pigs organized a fourth annual meeting for Competent Authorities and policy workers of EU Member States on pig welfare legislation. The meeting took place in Brussels and had participation from 26 officials from 21 European Union Member States.
News
Romanian indicator factsheet translations are now available
Romanian translations have been added to the EURCAW-Pigs website for all indicator factsheets.
Agenda
Indicator factsheets
Welfare indicators addressing nine prioritized welfare areas are described. These can be used by inspectors to identify potential or existing welfare problems and to verify compliance with EU legislation.
For each indicator, a factsheet is developed which describes the underlying welfare concern, the legal requirements, and a suggested inspection and scoring method. The factsheets are available in English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch and Romanian.
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Services and activities
EURCAW-Pigs provides scientific and technical knowledge to Competent Authorities of EU member states and their support bodies, for the official controls on pig welfare requirements laid down in the European pig welfare legislation.
The consortium between Friedrich Loeffler Institut (FLI, Germany), Aarhus University (AU, Denmark) and Wageningen Livestock Research (WLR, The Netherlands) was designated as the European Union Reference Centre for Animal Welfare for Pigs (EURCAW-Pigs), and started operating on 1 October 2018. EURCAW-Pigs' main areas of activity are described in detail in its Work Programme 2023-2024:
- EURCAW-Pigs' scientific output consists of review documents and thematic factsheets, which summarize the latest scientific and practical knowledge for eight prioritized welfare topics.
- For each of eight prioritized welfare topics a webdossier is built. The review documents and thematic factsheets developed by EURCAW-Pigs form the basis for the dossiers. Each dossier is a central source of technical information on a particular topic, with links to documents, video's etc..
- Welfare indicators addressing eight prioritized welfare topics are also described. These indicators are described in Indicator factsheets, which describe the underlying welfare concern, the legal requirements, and a suggested inspection and scoring method.
- With our Questions to EURCAW (Q2E) service, we provide technical and scientific advice on pig welfare. This Q2E service is open to Competent Authorities and government policy workers of EU Member States.
- To facilitate training, EURCAW-Pigs offers suggestions for training and continuing education courses for inspectors.
- All EURCAW-Pigs deliverables, as well as other relevant documents can be found in the Knowledge base.
Inspiring example: Active stall fatteners
Gabriele Mörixmann, a German Farmer, shows in the video her active stall for fatteners, which provides different adequate enrichments. She is housing pigs with intact tails. The stall also provides a darkened lying area and hospital pens. In standard housings pigs live mostly in barren environments. One risk factor for tail biting is inadequate environmental enrichment. Environmental enrichment should provide possibilities for performing exploration, foraging and comfort behaviour.