Educate animal welfare as a farming opportunity Erasmus Project

Project Title

Educate animal welfare as a farming opportunity

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Agriculture, forestry and fisheries

Project Summary

Animal welfare is a main topic integrated in the European regulations. It is taken more or less in consideration in the vocational curricula of agriculture according to the country. Nevertheless it is usually considered as a constraint by the farmers more than as an opportunity. The project brings together 10 varying organizations (universities, colleges, advisers and farmers training institutions, Farmers union), from 5 countries (Belgium, Finland, France, Portugal, Spain) to create a pedagogical toolkit and two curricula aimed at integrating animal welfare within farmers consciousness as a pragmatic and ethical topic.

The project aims to increase interest in and consideration for the controversial animal welfare topic within the professional activities of farmers through tools and two curricula (one for farmers, one for farmers trainers) which enable the implementation of a critical, creative and ethical reasoning in the respect of the context, constraint, wishes and needs of each trainee.

The curricula and the toolkit enable to implement constructive debates between trainees (students, farmers) and/or within an extended community (researcher, adviser, student, farmer) about animal welfare technics, ethics, and animal welfare economical promotion. They participate to support the empowerment of the farmers and students-farmers, and contribute to implement a pedagogy based on the dialogue between the experiential, technical and scientific knowledge and the ethical issues.

The first curriculum aims to train farmers animal welfare enabling a critical thinking and the integration of animal welfare as a main lever for the farm. The second one enables to train farmer educators (veterinarians, farmers advisors, teachers in vocational schools in agriculture) to take a posture of accompanior and animator to train animal welfare. Both of them have been built according to experimentations realized by the partners Anicare and are presented through key pedagogical steps which can adapted according to the specific context of the trainer. The pedagogical strategies that they propose are based on the use of a wide panel of movies showing divergent practices and farmers reasonings, animal behaviors in different farming situations, and movies of researchers, advisers and farmers commenting the farmer practices. Aniphi, a platform based on Delphi method, is more particularly proposed to implement a by-distance respectful debate with these movies .

All the outputs are presented on the website Anicare www.erasmus-anicare.eu.
Thanks to the diversity and to the wealth of its partnership, and to the originality of the chosen educational method; the project “Anicare” gives a new perspective on a first-rate theme still insufficiently developed in program of vocational training.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 429560,42 Eur

Project Coordinator

Institut national d’enseignement supérieur pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement & Country: FR

Project Partners

• COOPALIMA
• FEDERACION EFA GALICIA
• Jean-Pierre Durieux
• FACULDADE DE MEDICINA VETERINARIA
• Jukka Ilmonen
• Ruralidade Verde, Lda
• EPLEFPA de La Côte Saint André