European partnership on animal health and welfare

ExpectedOutcome:

In line with the European Green Deal, this partnership will contribute to the objectives and targets of the new common agricultural policy (CAP) and the EU farm to fork strategy, for a transition to fair, healthy and resilient animal production systems, including the reduction of anti-microbial usage and improvement of animal welfare. A successful proposal will support research and innovation to help policy makers, animal health industry and other relevant actors to provide society with reassurance on the prevention and control of infectious animal diseases with appropriate means, where antimicrobials are prudently used, where animal welfare is respected and improved, thus contributing to sustainable animal farming and harvesting and the protection of public health and the environment.

The expected outcomes of the topic will also contribute to other impacts of Destination ‘Fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food systems from primary production to consumption’, as well as to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDGs 2, 3, to the One Health approach and to the CAP. It will contribute to the climate adaptation strategy, by fostering adaptation to climate change of livestock production.

The partnership is expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• Animal health and welfare research and innovation agendas from the EU and Member States and Associated Countries are complementary, leading to the co-creation and implementation of a long-term pan-European strategic research and innovation agenda, strengthening the European Research Area in the area of animal health and welfare.
• A robust European R&I system for animal health and welfare is put in place. The direction for expanding existing collaborations and building up new ones, boosting knowledge creation and sharing, is set.
• The animal health and welfare research community at large benefit from and use an improved comprehensive knowledge framework integrating relevant EU, national/regional data and information infrastructures to improve transnational research.
• Preparedness against upcoming and emerging threats to animal health, including zoonoses and vector-borne diseases, is strengthened for both animals and humans.
• Animal welfare is promoted and strengthened, including adaptation to climate change.
• Farmers, the veterinary profession and other actors in animal production have increased access to innovative methodologies and products for animal infectious diseases and animal welfare monitoring and control.
• Increased evidence-base is provided to animal health and welfare policymakers.

Scope:

The partnership should coordinate research programmes and activities on animal health and welfare between the EU and its Member States and Associated Countries and trigger combined action.

It should mobilise key partners and stakeholders, including ministries, funding agencies, research performing organisations, research infrastructures, farmers, industry, etc.

The partnership should address terrestrial livestock and aquatic animals. Wildlife and companion animals will be addressed when there is a potential threat to public health or health of production animals.

The partnership’s co-created strategic research and innovation agenda should include calls for research projects, as well as integrative activities. As such, it should boost fundamental research through to applied research, and should give rise to ready-to-use solutions, seek uptake of results and provide science-based policy advisory activities.

Delivering on the partnership’s ambitions requires the implementation of the following portfolio of activities to be achieved during the partnership’s lifetime:

• To support transnational research and innovation activities, as defined in its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA).
• To facilitate the cooperation between all major actors on the monitoring, prevention and control of animal infectious diseases and on animal welfare issues. Actions will be undertaken to strengthen alignment of research and innovation programs and joint integrative activities among research performing organisations and other actors and stakeholders to organise education and training activities, mobility schemes, networking; to optimise research infrastructures and resources, including networking.
• To boost research and to increase the evidence-base to develop products, indicators and tools for monitoring, control and improvement of animal health and animal welfare from farming to slaughtering, notably through joint research activities organised both among research performing organisations in the partnership and through launching open joint calls.
• To support surveillance, detection, risk assessment and alert communication, prevention, including selective breeding for relevant phenotypes and feeding supporting health and welfare, interventions including vaccines and treatments, socio-economic assessment on animal health and welfare.
• To enhance cross-sector cooperation and collaboration to prevent the spill-over of pathogens between animals, food, the environment and humans in a One Health perspective. The partnership will contribute to a multidisciplinary approach across sectors dealing with animal health and animal welfare, public health, food safety and the environment, including adaptation to climate change, in particular regarding zoonoses and antimicrobial resistance.
• To ensure general and targeted communication on the outputs of the partnership and dissemination of its deliverables to partners, policymakers, national and international stakeholders, and all other possible users, to stimulate their uptake and implementation.
• To regularly update the partnership vision and strategy, in particular to address new needs, for instance emergencies, policy implementation, stakeholders’ interests, societal demands.

The Partnership is open to all EU Member States, as well as to countries associated to Horizon Europe. Partners are expected to provide financial and/or in-kind contribution, in line with the level of ambition of the proposed activities. The Partnership should be open to include new partners over its lifetime. Its governance should allow for engaging a broad range of stakeholders, together with the full members of the Partnership.

Guidelines, standards and legislation in the field should be taken into consideration, to facilitate the marketing of the methods and products developed in the partnership.

Proposals should pool the necessary financial resources from the participating national (or regional) research programmes with a view to implementing joint calls for transnational proposals resulting in grants to third parties. Financial support provided by the participants to third parties is one of the means of this action to achieve its objectives.

To ensure that all work streams are coherent and complementary, the partnership is expected to foster close cooperation and synergies with the existing European Partnership Biodiversa + and with relevant future European Partnerships, in particular ‘agroecology living labs and research infrastructures’^[1], ‘sustainable food systems for people, planet & climate’^[2], ‘one health AMR^[3]’ and ‘pandemic preparedness’.

The partnership should allocate resources to:

• Cooperate with existing projects, initiatives, platforms, science-policy interfaces, at EU and other levels, where relevant to the partnership’s goals;
• Engage with relevant EU bodies in charge of providing scientific advice for policy making in the area of animal health and welfare, such as the European Food Safety Authority and the European Medicines Agency, and other EU bodies, where relevant to the partnership’s goals.

To achieve the international cooperation objectives, and given the global dimension, not least of animal health, collaboration with strategic third country partners with proven added value in the field of animal health and welfare is encouraged. In particular, the participation of legal entities from international countries and/or regions including those not automatically eligible for funding, is encouraged in the joint calls and/or in other activities of the partnership. Cooperation with international organisations may be considered.

Applicants are expected to describe in detail how they would carry out this collaborative work in practice.

Efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of this topic is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable).

Cross-articulation with the other data spaces, and notably with the European Open Science Cloud should be foreseen, exploiting synergies and complementarities of the different approaches.

This topic should involve the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities disciplines.

The Commission envisages to include new actions in future work programme(s) to continue providing support to the partnership for the duration of Horizon Europe.

The expected duration of the partnership is seven to ten years.

Specific Topic Conditions:

The total indicative budget for the duration of the partnership is EUR 180 million.

[1]HORIZON-CL6-2023-FARM2FORK: European partnership on accelerating farming systems transition: agroecology living labs and research infrastructures

[2]HORIZON-CL6-2023-FARM2FORK: European partnership on sustainable food systems for people, plant and climate

[3]HORIZON-HLTH-2024-DISEASE-09-01: European Partnership: One Health Anti-Microbial Resistance