TechCare is a multi-actor approach project aiming to develop appropriate business models using innovative technologies to improve welfare management for all EU small ruminant (SR) systems, to enable stakeholders to choose animal welfare-friendly products. SRs play a key socio-economic role in Europe, especially in harsh environments where innovative technology is not much implanted. SRs are often managed as a flock/herd, allowing only average welfare states to be considered. Innovative technologies are a unique opportunity to monitor and improve SR welfare management at the individual or flock/herd level, along the value chain. Based on SR welfare state-of-the-art, TechCare will undertake a multi-actor approach to encapsulate stakeholders’ expectations in terms of welfare and innovative technologies, and provide them with adapted solutions, in a co-design approach. TechCare will cover all stages of SR production and build novel welfare approaches to develop and validate tools, early warning systems, algorithms and indicators for efficient identification of welfare issues, including positive welfare, to include them in welfare management models. The innovative technologies identified in TechCare will pass different stages of validation, from prototyping to large scale studies. TechCare identified solutions will therefore be replicable and adapted to different SR systems, production purposes, and value chains, for improvement of SR welfare management EU-wide. Business models will be constructed and validated with stakeholders. Dissemination, communication and exploitation materials will be produced and widely shared for easy use of TechCare solutions, ensuring their uptake and relevance to all sectors and stakeholders. TechCare will offer a durable improvement of SR welfare management using innovative technologies along the whole value chain and across the EU, and will act as an example in terms of approach and solutions for other species and production systems.

Farmed seafood is an important source of protein for food and feeds with a low-carbon footprint which has an important role to play in helping to build a sustainable food system. A strategic and long-term approach for the sustainable growth of a resilient EU aquaculture is, therefore, more relevant today than ever. However, the efficient and cost-effective control of pathogens remains among the main challenges for the sector, particularly relevant for Europe, where there is a great variety of species and production systems, which hinders the implementation of good husbandry practices tailored to each aquatic species. Through active engagement with key stakeholders, Cure4Aqua aims to jointly improve the resilience of EU aquaculture under environmental, biological, and socio-economic stress, by improving aquatic animal health and welfare and supporting the environmentally friendly, inclusive, safe, and healthy production of seafood. Cure4Aqua will do so by 1) developing cost-effective vaccines to prevent disease caused by 5 pathogens of economic significance to EU aquaculture; 2) Identifying markers with diagnostic capacity to be integrated to selective breeding programs to improve stress and disease management; 3) Developing innovative, bio-based and sustainable solutions as an alternative to antibiotics for controlling fish pathogens at various life stages and alleviate the pressure of global antimicrobial resistance; 4) Developing new tools and technology to improve health and welfare monitoring at the fish farm level and diagnostics of fish pathogens both at the laboratory and the fish farm levels; 5) Placing fish welfare at the foreground of aquaculture production, through the development of high welfare standards that consider different life-stages, production systems, and knowledge of welfare needs, and 6) Ensuring effective external communication, dissemination and exploitation of project activities and results to all relevant target groups. Workday Project Setup Complete

Infestation of hen houses with the poultry red mite (PRM) costs the poultry industry an estimated 130 million euros per annum in the EU (approximately 0.43 euros per hen). The mites live, off-host, in inaccessible areas of the cages during daylight and emerge during darkness to feed on the hens, biting through the skin to feed on blood. Infestation of production facilities with this parasite therefore has important animal welfare implications including anaemia, increased irritation and restlessness, feather-pecking and an increased incidence of cannibalism. These behaviours have a considerable negative impact on productivity. Poultry red mites have also been implicated as carriers for a number of important avian diseases and have recently been recommended to be listed as an occupational hazard for poultry workers on the basis of their allergenicity. Until recently, PRM infestation has been controlled with the use of pesticide sprays in hen houses during the period that the houses are not populated (i.e. before the introduction of new birds at the start of a laying cycle). Controlling mite populations is now a major problem, with most pesticides affording only limited or short-lived reduction in the population of mites. Also, because of concerns over safety and environmental contamination, many of the currently effective pesticides have been withdrawn from use and the emergence of resistance to the remaining compounds has exacerbated these problems with mite control. Vaccination offers a safe, effective alternative to chemical treatments. It is now recognised that vaccines to blood-feeding parasites can result in effective and sustainable control and our previous work has clearly established that vaccination against PRM is feasible and deliverable. A commercially viable vaccine against PRM should contain one highly effective synthetic version of a mite protein ("antigen") or, less ideally, a cocktail incorporating a small number of such proteins. Previous studies at Moredun have shown that vaccination of laying hens with extracts of PRMs can induce mortality in mites feeding on the blood of vaccinated hens and control mite numbers. These studies have shown that: i) Antibodies to mite antigens in the blood can cause significant mite mortality, and this effect (mortality) occurs within 24 hours, and ii) a similar effect can be achieved with recombinant proteins which are easier to produce consistently and hence lend themselves to large scale production. The overall objectives of the proposed work are therefore: 1) To identify protective immunogenic sub-fractions of the PRM extract; 2) To identify the immunogenic antigen(s) in these sub-fractions by combined immunoblotting and proteomic analyses; 3) To produce a sub-set of these immunogenic proteins as recombinant proteins and raise antibodies against these recombinants in hens; 4) To test these antibodies for mite mortality and/or developmental effects in our lab-based feeding system; 5) To select the most potent recombinant antigens from this screen to test in combination, in a field vaccine trial. If successful, this project will deliver the first recombinant vaccine to be developed against an ectoparasite with a worldwide distribution and, therefore, market. We will use innovative technologies, coupling Moredun's unique PRM genomic data and specialist protein analysis facilities to identify the protective antigens, produce them in recombinant systems and deliver them to the birds in the context of the most effective vaccinology that our industry partner can supply.