L'Istituto a Bruxelles per il progetto ANIBAM finanziato dall'EFSA

The kick-off meeting of the project "ANIBAM" (Use of animal based measures for the assessment of dairy cow welfare) took place onthe 13th of February in Brussels. The project, financed by the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), has the aim of identifying, validate and collect data on animal-based measures to create a database for quantitative assessment of the welfare of dairy cows. The project, having a total budget of about 600.000 euros, will last 18 month.

The project Consortium, led by the University of Aarhus (Denmark), involve a total of seven research institutes belonging to five different European countries. The Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell'Abruzzo e del Molise "G. Caporale" (IZS A&M) is partner of the project and will coordinate the activities of the first work-package, with the contribution of colleagues form the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Lombardia e dell'Emilia Romagna. The other project partners are: the French INRA (National Institute for Agrinomic research), the Swedish SLU (University of Agricultural Sciences), the Belgian ILVO (Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research) and the Faculty of Life Sciences, of the University of Copenhagen.

In the meeting participated all the project partners, together with representatives of the EFSA and of the European Commission (DG Research). Dr. Lindsay Matthews and dr. Stefano Messori, belonging to the Human-Animal Relationship and Animal Welfare Laboratory of the IZS A&M, took part in the meeting and presented the activities that are foreseen in the first month of the work. Two of the statisticians of the Institute, dr. Annamaria Conte and dr. Romolo Salini , also participated in the meeting through web-connection.