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Positive Animal Welfare Team use Research Award for fruitful retreat

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July 19, 2024

The Positive Animal Welfare (PAW) Team has used the WUR Research Team effort of the Year prize for a fruitful 2-day retreat and made plans for research in the field of positive animal welfare. The team’s ambition is to find resources to investigate whether flourishing can be assessed and facilitated in farm animals.

Members of the Positive Animal Welfare (PAW) team have used their WUR Research Team effort of the Year prize for a fruitful retreat in Rheden on 16 and 17 July. During the retreat they have developed plans for both fundamental and applied research in the field of positive animal welfare, thereby strengthening the collaboration between the three WUR groups in the PAW Team (Adaptation Physiology, Animal Production Systems and Livestock Research Animal Health and Welfare). Future research questions they would like to address are related to flourishing, which is, in humans, crucially related to health, resilience and positive emotional states. The team’s ambition is to find resources to investigate whether flourishing can be assessed and facilitated in farm animals.

The Positive Animal Welfare (PAW) team combines expertise in the field of positive animal welfare from three different groups, ensuring a leading role of WUR in scientific studies on Positive Animal Welfare and in European efforts towards lifting the lives of farm animals. Together all the disciplines and skills relevant to the study of positive animal welfare in farm animals are covered: from ethology to physiology, from conceptual thinking to science-based application, from animal level to farm level.

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Team members are Laura Webb, Simon Oosting (Animal Production Systems Group), Allyson Ipema, Liesbeth Bolhuis, Inonge Reimert, Bas Kemp (Adaptation Physiology Group), Fleur Hoorweg, Ingrid de Jong, Hans Spoolder and Yvette de Haas (Wageningen Livestock Research).