PIGWEB: A European infrastructure project for experimental pig research

International audience

anglais. The European Commission considers research infrastructures as key elements for the advancement of knowledge, structure the scientific community, facilitate open, interconnected, and data-driven science, and to attract young people to science. Through its Horizon 2020 framework program, the Commission funds research infrastructure projects that are composed of Transnational Access (TNA), Networking Activities (NA), and Joint Research Activities (JRA), each with a budget of approximately 1.5 million euros. PIGWEB is such a research infrastructure project that started on March 1st, 2021 with the aim to strengthen the pig research community by providing and facilitating access to research infrastructures, reinforce a culture of cooperation between the research community and industrial and societal stakeholders, and improve and integrate the services provided by the research infrastructures. The project gathers 16 partners from nine European countries. Transnational access is provided through 22 installations, allowing external parties to carry out their experiments in PIGWEB installations, funded by the project. The installations include various experimental pig housing facilities and production systems, slaughterhouses and associated equipment, respiration chambers, experimental feed mills, and laboratories to carry out studies on pig nutrition, metabolism, physiology, behavior, and emissions. Networking activities include the mapping of research infrastructure and the identification of future needs. It also focuses on best practices for protocols, standards, and ethics in experimental pig research and on ontologies and Open Data and Open Science. The use of animals in research is challenged by society, especially in Europe. However, most animal scientists are not at ease to communicate with society about their research. The project provided training to scientists to communicate more and better with societal stakeholders and to engage in a constructive dialogue. Joint research activities are carried out to identify and test non- and minimally invasive proxies of efficiency, health, stress, and environmental impact. New methods, tools, and technologies have been developed to measure traits that are difficult to measure, related to welfare, behavior, and body composition. The newly developed and available research methods are combined in a research toolbox and are being tested to carry out integrated phenotyping of pigs.