October 20 2021
Brussels

Assessing animal health research needs for a healthy planet – 20 October, Brussels

Organised in collaboration with STAR-IDAZ IRC & hosted by AnimalhealthEurope

Background

Improving animal health is a key factor to address today’s global challenges. It is an essential component to improve animal welfare, to secure the provision of safe and nutritious food of a growing world population, to improve livelihoods and stimulate economic growth in rural areas and to reduce natural resource use and climate emissions of the livestock sector. At the same time, global changes such as increased mobility of people and animals, changing consumer behaviours and climate change are altering disease risk. Public and private sectors act upon these challenges and invest in research for the development of new animal health solutions. This has improved our knowledge on pathogens & immune mechanisms and led to the development of new medicines, diagnostics and control methods. But with major progress made in the containment of infectious diseases over the last decades, what are the remaining gaps that need to be filled and where may future research have the largest impact to deliver the control tools that we will need in the future?

The symposium will draw on the DISCONTOOLS and STAR-IDAZ IRC initiatives to identify current research gaps and provide research road maps for innovations in animal health. It hopes to bring together scientists, policy makers, and representatives from the animal health industry, funding bodies and stakeholder organisations to enhance collaboration for animal health and discuss research priorities.

Objectives

With DISCONTOOLS having completed the update of 47 disease chapters, the time is right to summarise the gaps in control tools, identify disease-specific as well as cross-cutting research needs and define the path towards required new control tools. The symposium aims to

• Highlight DISCONTOOLS animal health research gaps for epizootic, production and zoonotic animal diseases;
• Disseminate STAR-IDAZ research road maps for new animal health solutions;
• Couple the research gaps and road maps with recent and future animal health funding initiatives (ERA-NET Co-fund ICRAD, Horizon Europe);
• Increase the mutual understanding of animal health research needs by different stakeholders;
• Discuss animal health research priorities to deliver on the sustainable development goals.