In this article, she explains the purpose of WelFarmers and the challenges facing the welfare area in light of the current focus areas.

Our Commitment is rooted in showing respect for pigs. This is the WelFarmer’s mission statement, which was at the forefront when members of the consortium met in Lleida in Spain in April 2025.

“The meeting highlighted that we’re stronger together and more likely to make progress through collaboration,” said Vivi Moustsen.  

Denmark joined WelFarmers because the project focuses on four key aspects of pig welfare and is a unique collaboration between pig producers and universities/innovation centres.

“One objective is to improve pig welfare by sharing good practices developed on the farm. The second objective is to share good practices developed across EU-countries, e.g. with policy makers so that future pig welfare legislation reflects farm practices to a greater extent,” she explains.

Shared experience improves confidence in change for others

Some participating countries find it very difficult to change from farrowing crates to loose housing for lactating sows. Other countries have experience with loose housing that they are happy to share in order to build confidence in changing production systems or husbandry practices. Although only about 5% of Danish sows are loose-housed during lactation, Danish pig producers are experienced in loose housing. In addition, SEGES Innovation has been involved in trials to improve productivity and welfare for lactating sows and their piglets for a number of years.

Some countries, such as Ireland, are experienced in the production of entire males and share experience of how to manage the housing and production of entire males and females. Other countries, like Finland, have good experience of preventing tail biting in undocked pigs.

As regards all four aspects of welfare, sharing practical experience from other pig producers encourages colleagues to be more confident in adopting pig welfare improvements.

Good practice

The eight regional networks in the WelFarmer project have collected good practices from farms that set out how farmers manage:

·         Loose lactating sows

·         Pigs with undocked tails

·         No pain at castration

·         Improved space during growth and finishing

These will be evaluated by groups of experts in June and the best practices selected before September. 

In addition, the leaders for the four themes have compiled reviews that address the main challenges within each area. These reviews will assist the four thematic groups in evaluating the collected good practices. The evaluation will include scoring the technical quality, potential impact and likelihood of success.

Face-to-face meetings

The meeting in April underlined that while many issues can be usefully discussed and solved in online meetings - thus saving travelling time - face-to-face meetings are important too, and improve the outcome of online meetings. 

The participants in the physical meeting visited a Vall Companys Group farm, which produces +5 million pigs annually.