TechCare is a multi-actor approach project aiming to develop appropriate business models using innovative technologies to improve welfare management for all EU small ruminant (SR) systems, to enable stakeholders to choose animal welfare-friendly products. SRs play a key socio-economic role in Europe, especially in harsh environments where innovative technology is not much implanted. SRs are often managed as a flock/herd, allowing only average welfare states to be considered. Innovative technologies are a unique opportunity to monitor and improve SR welfare management at the individual or flock/herd level, along the value chain. Based on SR welfare state-of-the-art, TechCare will undertake a multi-actor approach to encapsulate stakeholders’ expectations in terms of welfare and innovative technologies, and provide them with adapted solutions, in a co-design approach. TechCare will cover all stages of SR production and build novel welfare approaches to develop and validate tools, early warning systems, algorithms and indicators for efficient identification of welfare issues, including positive welfare, to include them in welfare management models. The innovative technologies identified in TechCare will pass different stages of validation, from prototyping to large scale studies. TechCare identified solutions will therefore be replicable and adapted to different SR systems, production purposes, and value chains, for improvement of SR welfare management EU-wide. Business models will be constructed and validated with stakeholders. Dissemination, communication and exploitation materials will be produced and widely shared for easy use of TechCare solutions, ensuring their uptake and relevance to all sectors and stakeholders. TechCare will offer a durable improvement of SR welfare management using innovative technologies along the whole value chain and across the EU, and will act as an example in terms of approach and solutions for other species and production systems.

iSAGE will enhance the sustainability, competitiveness and resilience of the European Sheep and Goat sectors through collaboration between industry and research. iSAGE have a powerful consortium with 18 industry representatives from various EU production systems and socio-economic contexts. The sheep and goat sector will be investigated because it is sensitive to general socio-economic, demographic, and ecological and market challenges; nevertheless, the project’s approach and results will be made available and disseminated to other EU livestock industries. Therefore, at the core of iSAGE is a participatory approach centered on a multi-actor internal and external communication (WP) to build the project from the farmer level. This approach will ensure relevant issues are addressed and the project outcomes are applicable in practice and create a farm-level observatory and knowledge exchange network on the sustainability of livestock. This WP will also assist three assessment work packages that will deal with the sustainability assessment of sheep and goat farm systems and related supply chains, with socio-economic demographic and consumer trend analyses, and with the impacts of climate change. Assessment WPs will inform action WPs that will: (1) redesign holistic farming systems to best reconcile the various demands concerning productivity, sustainability and societal values. (2) identify industry solutions that aim to improve sustainability and productivity of sheep and goat systems through breeding, including new phenotypes linked to sustainable animal productivity. iSAGE, together with stakeholders and end-users, will draft a roadmap for further research and policy making. The stakeholder groups will be the key players in disseminating project outputs through case studies and demonstrations to act as a blueprint to other producers across Europe and create networks to assist wider implementation of iSAGE outputs.