– by C. Morgan-Davies (SRUC)
TechCare held its 4th annual meeting in Alghero, Sardinia, on the 4th and 5th of February 2025. Up to 40 people from the 19 consortium partners all met over the two days. Partners from the UK (MRI, Breedr), France (IDELE, CNBL, INRAe), Italy (AGRIS, EAAP, Abinsula), Israel (ARO, Spark), Norway (NIBIO), Spain (UAB, Oviaragon), Greece (ELGO-DIMITRA) and Romania (BUAS), led by SRUC (UK), discussed the progress of the project over the last 4 years, and focused on the activities for the last 6 months until the end (August 2025). Four advisory members (from Italy, Spain and the UK) also joined in the discussion (two of them via Zoom) and gave their feedback to the project team. One of the TechCare PhD students (Gili Mishal-Shalit) also presented their work on data analysis. The annual meeting had been organised locally by the Italian partners from AGRIS and EAAP. The project has been progressing well, with the welfare issues in small ruminant systems having been prioritised by stakeholders at the start of the project, followed by an inventory of potential precision livestock farming (PLF) tools that could help monitor or manage these welfare issues. Trials and prototyping of some of the identified PLF tools on pilot farms and on experimental farms are now complete and data exchanges and manipulation, to develop early warning systems, are well underway. Deployment and further testing of the retained tools have been set up on commercial farms in Europe (Ireland, France, Romania, Greece and Spain) and data is being collected and used in the design of early warning systems. Business models are being investigated by all partners’ stakeholders. Discussions and feedback were essential at this stage, as we are entering the last months of the project, with still a lot of activities to carry out, not least the organisation of the final project conference on 17-18th June in Brussels (watch this space!). It was extremely beneficial to meet once again in person to ensure the whole consortium is ready for the final steps of the project. Overall, a very fruitful last meeting for the project in lovely Sardinia, and the wonderful hospitality of our Italian colleagues!
© TechCare
