Research on domesticated animals has important scientific and socio-economic impacts, including contributing to medical research, improving the health and welfare of companion animals, and underpinning improvements in the animal sector of agriculture. Domesticated animals cover a wide evolutionary spectrum and are characterized by a wealth of genetic and phenotypic diversity shaped by natural and artificial selection. Improving the functional annotation of animal genomes is critical to enabling the bridging of the gap between genotype and phenotype, thus enabling predictive biology. Extensive research has been conducted since decades to elucidate the genetic architecture underlying quantitative traits, and deep pedigrees with extensive phenotypic records exist. However, especially in farm species the annotation of the genome sequence is still largely limited to gene models deduced from alignments with expressed sequences (cDNA, ESTs, RNAseq) and some sequence variation (SNPs, CNVs). This lack of knowledge is a significant barrier to understanding the link between genotype and phenotype in these animal species, as well as to exploit their increasingly recognized biological value in comparative and evolutionary genomics. FAANG is a recent international initiative whose aim is to produce comprehensive maps of functional elements in the genomes of domesticated animal species. FAANG benefits from lessons learnt in similar project such as ENCODE and other large consortia e.g. the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC), which have demonstrated how improved functional annotation can be efficiently delivered collaboratively based on common standardized protocols and procedures. The overarching goal of FAANG is the development of predictive models based on the understanding of the underlying biological mechanisms, particularly the epigenetic control of transcription during differentiation / responses to perturbation in systems of relevance to health and production traits, and how such mechanisms are affected by genetic variation. The white paper of the consortium has been published recently (Andersson et al. Genome Biol. 2015; PMID: 25854118); the proposer of this project is the co-corresponding author, and the partners of the current proposal are main contributors. This proposal (FAANG-ForE) is one of the results from the established collaboration between the core European partners in both ongoing and submitted FAANG-related research, in FAANG coordination roles, as well as in disseminating activities at the level of National and European funding agencies. Established contacts with the European Commission allowed us identifying a path for consolidating the European FAANG leadership towards the creation in the longer term of an International Research Consortium (IRC) for FAANG research. An IRC for FAANG is justified by the recognized need of improved reference genomes and epigenetics knowledge, and by the importance of biodiversity for applied (i.e. new tools to choose genetic resources to be preserved) and research purposes (i.e. regulatory genomic variants which can help deciphering the basis of complex traits). This goal is ambitious and requires an adequate structuring strategy at start. FAANG - ForE aims at reinforcing the role of France as a leading partner in implementing this process. The first step is to coordinate a proposal for a FAANG infrastructure at the forthcoming EU Infrastructure call for “Integrating and opening existing national and regional research infrastructure of European interest”, whose publication is expected in early October 2015. The FAANG infrastructure will contribute an essential framework of reference for genomic data and standards for the French and enlarged European animal genomics community for the proposition of specific “FAANG-related” research topics – for both fundamental and applied research - to future H2020 research calls.