March 16 the FareWellDock team had another videoconference meeting. Partners from FI (3), UK (4), DK (4), SE (1), FR (1) and NL (1) presented and discussed progress in the various project’s workpackages.
This will be the final year of the project. One of the joint activities is to produce factsheets on the FareWellDock project as a whole, aspects related to tail docking and tail length, the relationship between tail biting and health, enrichment, and the prediction of tail biting outbreaks.
Further meeting scheduled for this year include a meeting associated with this year’s ISAE meeting in Edinburgh, a physical meeting in Denmark and meeting with stakeholders.
Other points of interest:
There was an FVO visit to Finland on banning tail docking, where Anna gave a presentation.
There is a new COST action, GroupHouseNet, on tail biting and feather pecking.
There is a new ANIHWA project PigWatch (Hans Spoolder) “Combining the ‘eye of the stockman’ and precision farming techniques to improve pig welfare”.
The EC had a recent meeting on tail biting, docking and enrichment for pigs.
Several of the FareWellDock partners are involved in the writing of chapters of a new book on pig welfare.
A lot is happening this year ….
