WelFarmers will set up eight national innovation networks and four Europe-wide networks of pig farmers, advisors, veterinarians and researchers to address the challenges of the upcoming change in the European pig welfare legislation. WelFarmers will address four main topics: cage ban; keeping pigs with uncovered tails; avoiding pain during castration and space and flooring. The most urgent innovation needs and challenges will be identified in a bottom up way and the network will collect and evaluate good practices that meet these needs. WelFarmers will also strive to collaborate with existing and new EIP-AGRI operational groups (OGs) and EU research projects focused on pig welfare and to enhance their impact. The selected best practices will be disseminated through a series of communication and dissemination activities to reach most pig farmers in the eight participating countries and in Europe. EIP abstracts, thematic reports videos, brochures, e-news, national workshops, transnational cross-fertilisation events and a multilingual website are some of the dissemination methods planned to communicate and disseminate the best practices.

VAX4ASF aims to develop a state-of-the-art platform to produce highly effective and safe vaccines against ASFV targeted for both domestic pigs and wild boars. These vaccine candidates will be designed based on an innovative and robust vaccine platform that will guarantee immune protection against the different circulating ASFV variants in Europe, while avoiding the safety concerns arisen with the use of traditional live attenuated vaccine platforms. Vaccine candidates will effectively induce innate immune response with the adequate adaptive immunity. Moreover, the immunity induced will allow discrimination between vaccinated and infected animals, which will be monitored by complementary DIVA tests developed under the scope of the project. Given the complexity of ASFV genome and the still incomplete knowledge of the mechanisms involved in immune response to ASFV, VAX4ASF aims to further understand the molecular mechanisms of the virus and how it interacts with the host. The developed platform can be used to introduce new mutations based in this new generated knowledge which will allow to improve the efficacy and cross-protection of the vaccine prototypes. VAX4ASF will provide new virus epidemiology models and control strategies using different mathematical models, leading to a better understanding of the ASFV transmission at the wild-domestic interface. In this way, innovative policies and strategies for ASFV control and management will be generated to ensure an outstanding impact through the continuous involvement of key stakeholders as project partners (farmers, wild board managers, veterinaries, hunters, policy makers...), leading to a profound effect in animal health and worldwide economy. The project relies on a solid collaboration trajectory between leading developers of innovative Animal Health vaccines and the highest experts in ASF field at international level, including partners from Europe, USA, and Kenya for the achievement of this challenge.

The DISARM thematic network (Disseminating Innovative Solutions for Antibiotic Resistance Management) is focused on disseminating best practices from innovative farms and research on how to reduce antibiotic resistance in livestock farming. Antibiotic resistance management is not only important to farming, it can also lead to reduced effectiveness of antibiotics in treating humans. Tackling antibiotic resistance is a major strategic challenge for European livestock farmers, an industry worth over 145billion euros. Evidence shows that rates of antibiotic use and resistance vary greatly from farm to farm and, that with the adoption of appropriate innovative on farm management practices that both the use of antibiotics and the development of resistance can be reduced. Disseminating these effective management practices is at the heart of the DISARM project, which will work with farmers, vets, advisors, industry and researchers to identify and disseminate widely the most cost effective and beneficial strategies. This will be delivered by: * Developing a 600 member multi-actor Community of Practice to share, debate and disseminate the most promising strategies to reduce antibiotic resistance in livestock farming; * Producing 10 best practice guides, supported by 100 best practice abstracts and 100 short videos to explain how farms have successfully adopted innovative practices to reduce antibiotic resistance; * Working with 40 farms (in 8 countries) to develop multi-actor farm health plans with at least 30 of these being used as case studies to show other farms how working with their vet, feed or equipment suppliers and advisory services can help them adopt a set of best practices suited to their farm; * Run 80 events to disseminate best practices, hosted by farmers or research centres or hosted by DISARM beneficiaries but resulting from an intensive collaboration between a DISARM beneficiary and stakeholders from the livestock industry and to speak at 60 further industry events; * Deliver 3 annual reports on the remaining challenges with antibiotic resistance which research or policy developments need to address.