Production diseases compromise health and welfare, generating inefficiencies that impact adversely on profitability, environmental footprint, antibiotic use, and product quality.
The PROHEALTH project will develop an understanding of the multi-factorial dimension of animal pathologies linked to the intensification of production and use this to develop, evaluate and disseminate effective control strategies to reduce impact.
It will address production diseases of pigs and poultry raised in a wide range of EU intensive systems, using both epidemiological and experimental approaches to consider the extent of, and the risk factors associated with diseases, the influence of genotype and its modification by early life experience, and the dynamic influences of the environment on disease. The mechanisms underlying differences in disease susceptibility will be explored at different levels. Improvement strategies for diseases including neo-natal mortality, gut and respiratory disorders, leg and metabolic disorders will be evaluated in farm-scale tests, and data from diverse systems used to model whole-chain socioeconomic implications of disease states and their alleviation.
The consortium has expertise in veterinary science and epidemiology, physiology and immunology, genetics, nutrition, socioeconomics, welfare and production science of pigs and poultry. The 10 academic, 1 association 4 industry and 7 SME partners cover the full European geographic range to derive meaningful epidemiological data and test interventions across diverse production circumstances.
Dissemination activities will encompass all stakeholders in the food chain and establish new e-learning tools. PROHEALTH will deliver novel diagnostics for the propensity to develop production diseases and their occurrence, and multifactorial improvement strategies that can be applied to produce better quality products in a welfare-friendly manner and improve competitiveness and sustainability of EU pig & poultry systems.
