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PROHEALTH, led by Newcastle University, has been awarded the largest ever EU grant in animal health to explore new ways to ensure the sustainability of modern animal production.
The consortium of 22 academic, industry and private enterprise organisations from 11 countries has been awarded 11.9 million Euros (more than £10 million) to identify new solutions to reconcile modern animal production systems and sustainability.
Launched today at a meeting at Newcastle University, the project focuses on exploring ways to increase production quality, limiting environmental impact and preserving profitability for the farmers, and those who live from animal food production.
The PROHEALTH (PROduction HEALTH – Sustainable intensive pig and poultry production) consortium brings together ten academic partners, one European association, four industry partners, and seven SMEs with expertise in veterinary science and epidemiology, animal physiology and immunology, socioeconomics, genetics and nutrition, as well as the welfare and production science of pigs and poultry.
It draws its members from the UK, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Switzerland. With broad expertise and geographic representation, it is ideally positioned to address the scientific challenges involved, derive meaningful epidemiological data, evaluate test interventions across diverse real-world systems, and propagate outcomes.
PROHEALTH will address production diseases of pigs and poultry (broiler and egg-laying chickens and turkeys) raised in a wide range of intensive systems across the EU.
The complexity, causality, extent and risks of different diseases and their interactions will be examined under field conditions. Epidemiological and experimental approaches will be applied to investigate links between genetic predisposition (animal) and environmental stressors (housing, nutrition, management), in addition to the dynamic influence of environment on disease.
Tuesday December 17, 2013/ Newcastle University/ United Kingdom.
http://www.ncl.ac.uk
