Updated 02/10/2009

Publicly available reports

The overall objective of the project is to provide information on pig castration that will support EU policy. The specific objectives are:

• Objective 1: to collect information on the attitudes of relevant stakeholders;
• Objective 2: to collect information on the practice of pig castration;
• Objective 3: to evaluate research work and other information, in order to examine the various alternatives to surgical castration without anaesthesia and derive research priorities;
• Objective 4: to integrate the collected information and evaluation in a report providing support for EU policy.

The consortium comprises 10 participant organisations. Participant persons are distributed into a core group of participant persons and an extended circle of participant persons.

The support activities are broken down into 4 work packages corresponding to the 4 specific objectives ( WP1: Attitudes; WP2: Practice; WP3: Evaluation; WP4: Recommendations). WP1 and WP2 are conducted in parallel during the first year of the programme. Under the supervision of regional co-ordinators, national contact people conduct interviews of stakeholders. The collected information is integrated at the international level to derive common trends and regional variations in attitudes and practice, as well as potential clashes of interest between the categories of stakeholders. The collected information is used as an input for WP3, together with other available resources. WP3 evaluates the available information on alternatives to surgical castration from various perspectives (attitudes, practice, welfare, pork quality, resource efficiency and economy). Within WP4, the information obtained from WP1, WP2 and WP3 is integrated in a report containing support for EU policy.

The most important deliverables are the reports on practice of castration (month 10), attitudes of stakeholders (month 12), evaluation of research (month 18) and recommendations for research and policy support (month 24).