About Care4Dairy
CARE4DAIRY has developed best practice guides to support the welfare of dairy calves, heifers and cows and end-of-career animals. The guidelines consist of a series of fact sheets on key topics. The project is farmer-centred and benefits from involvement from a range of stakeholders from farming and veterinary organisations, as well as academia.
CARE4DAIRY is a not-for-profit consortium which consists of five partners from European Union Reference Centre for Animal Welfare (EURCAW) – Ruminants & Equines: Professor Harry Blokhuis (coordinator) and Birgitta Staaf Larsson, Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Dr Isabelle Veissier (INRAE, France), Dr Evangelia Sossidou (ELGO-DIMITRA, Veterinary Research Institute, Greece), Dr Silvia D’Albenzio (IZSAM, Italy) and Professors Alison Hanlon and Siobhan Mullan (UCD, Ireland). IDELE and Phylum (France) specialists in applied research and bridging sciences are also part of the consortium.
Care4Dairy was structured into five tasks:
- Task 1: Definition of the methodology and work plan
- Task 2: Collecting scientific and technical information on the welfare of dairy cattle
- Task 3: Drafting and evaluating best practice guides
- Task 4: Consulting stakeholders and finalising best practices
- Task 5: Develop and implement a dissemination strategy
In order to develop best practice guides relevant to dairy production across EU member states, national consultations with key stakeholders were conducted in several EU member states. Feedback from the consultation process was used to refine the fact sheets, in terms of their usability and ensure that they are practice-ready for implementation on-farm.
The four best practice guides will be available on our multilingual website and the Care4Dairy smartphone App and will form the basis of a number of training events in several EU Member States.
For further information on the Care4Dairy project, please contact info@care4dairy.eu
