Already two years of co-creation of innovations with the European practitioners, consumers and citizens in the PPILOW project!

The second annual meeting of the European PPILOW project (Poultry and PIG Low-input and Organic production systems’ Welfare, 2019-2024) was held from the 21^st to the 23^rd of September, 2021. During this 3-days online meeting, 22 PPILOW partners from 9 European countries shared PPILOW advances with the members of its European Multiactor Board and National Practitioner Groups. Thanks to the project multiactor participatory approach, and despite the difficulties to meet and visit farms due to COVID-19 and the avian influenza, the interactions of PPILOW partners with European practitioners, consumers and citizens were very rich. The co-creation process enabled:

– to collect the preferences of the public and practitioner regarding welfare improvements and to evaluate their economic soundness,

– the release of the PIGLOW and EBENE application for pig and poultry, respectively, on which videos were created,

– the co-construction of the PPILOW data collection framework necessary to complete the later One Welfare sustainability assessments of the impacts of the proposed strategies and the building of associated business models.

Experiments for avoiding damages to pig and poultry physical integrity and the culling of day-old layer male chicks, and for enabling positive behaviours, improving health, robustness and welfare in both species on-farm are currently running in experimental facilities. PPILOW partners and the project’s National Practitioner Groups have now prepared or even started the field studies testing the PPILOW-proposed levers for welfare improvement in low-input outdoor and organic farming systems.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 816172. To keep updated about the project, visit PPILOW website, and follow our social media accounts (Twitter and Facebook).