The following workshops took place in Spring 2025:

• Workshop 1A - The Animal Welfare Scientist Perspective. May 23rd 2025, 9-12 hh, Location: AIAS, building 1630-301.
• Workshop 1B – The Animal Geneticist Perspective. May 15^th 2025, 9-12 hh, Location: 1130-329 (QGG coffee room)

The objective of this project is to facilitate a discussion on perspectives of animal welfare in animal breeding from the viewpoints of welfare scientists, geneticists/animal breeders, and key stakeholders in the livestock industries. The relationship between animal welfare and animal breeding is often positioned as adversarial and sometimes it can be challenging to collaborate. We want to better understand why these challenges might occur, and provide a roadmap for how to pursue animal welfare in genetics and breeding research in a way that promotes animal welfare from the perspective of welfare scientists, and is feasible from a geneticist perspective. This project involves a strategic series of workshops to facilitate constructive discourse on this topic and will ultimately result in a roadmap for improved collaboration between all stakeholders with regards to animal welfare in animal breeding.

Workshop 1 will involve a facilitated, constructive, cross-species, and critical discussion of how animal welfare scientists and animal geneticists, respectively, define animal welfare and envision animal welfare being incorporated into animal breeding strategies. The objective is to collect the opinions of experienced scientists to identify definitions, priorities, and perceived opportunities and challenges for incorporating animal welfare in animal breeding plans.

Workshop 2 combined the outputs and participants from these parallel workshops and offer a facilitated discussion of the similarities and differences between the visions of the welfare scientists and geneticists. The main objective of this workshop was to discuss any differences in vision to develop a roadmap or suggestion for including animal welfare in animal breeding.

Level 3 workshops involved presenting the joint academic vision from Workshop 2 to industry stakeholders, with a focus on how to bridge the gap between fields in practice. Due to key differences between industries, discussions were divided into monogastric (3A) and ruminant species (3B). Individuals from breeding companies, research institutes, and non-governmental organizations were invited to participate. Through critical discussions of how the combined academic vision aligns with stakeholder visions , we: 1) identified the industry’s opportunities and challenges when it comes to integrating welfare data in animal breeding , and 2) how these two groups of data scientists can support the industry with implementing welfare data in breeding.