PIGWEB - Agroscope pig research networked with Europe

pig-web

Agroscope Swine Research Unit is participating as one of the 16 research institutes in the PIGWEB consortium, which is supported by the EU's Horizon 2020 research program.

The PIGWEB project aims to strengthen the European research community in the field of swine research by providing access to research infrastructures. It promotes a culture of collaboration between the research community and industrial and societal stakeholders. Additionally, the project aims to improve the research infrastructure services offered. The project started on March 1, 2021 and will last for 5 years.

Under the transnational access program, PIGWEB provides external teams with (both academic and private researchers) with easy and transparent access to 28 experimental research infrastructures and their associated laboratories. PIGWEB, together with all its partners, supports the European Green Deal with the goal of making Europe the first climate neutral continent by 2050. The joint "Farm to Fork" strategy promotes greener and more sustainable agriculture and food systems and contributes to this objective. PIGWEB plays a key role in identifying the levers, which can be applied to produce safe, nutritious, high-quality foods while minimizing environmental impact to meet the Green Deal goals. Additionally, it will address the concerns of citizens about the welfare of farm animals.

In PIGWEB, the Swine Research Unit is the leader of workpackage (WP) 7, which will evaluate, integrate, and demonstrate different existing and newly developed methods in a distributed, multisite experimental setting.
Additionally, Marion Girard, Catherine Ollagnier, Claudia Kasper und Patrick Schlegel are involved as Task Leaders in:

  • development of standard operating procedures and guidelines to ensure high quality of expertise and ethics in the research infrastructure of the network in WP2
  • testing new minimally-invasive methods for blood sampling in WP5
  • refining methods to measure body composition with non-invasive methods in pigs in WP6 and
  • dissemination activities in WP4.

Agroscope provides access to its infrastructure and shares its expertise on dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) technique and metabolism trials using metabolic cages. These infrastructures can be used by third parties through the transnational access program launched by the PIGWEB consortium.