Poultry is expected to become the world’s most widely consumed meat. The challenge for the European poultry meat sector is to provide safe and high-quality poultry meat products that are affordable for consumers around the world. Society demands, e.g. EUs Farm to Fork Strategy, more environmentally sustainable production, more animal-friendly production systems and a way of managing animal health that tackles key challenges, including antimicrobial resistance. Thus, significant adjustment of the broiler production system is needed, which also includes a greater capacity of farmers to cope and adapt their day-to-day farming practices. Recently, it has become obvious that access to knowledge alone is rarely enough to generate innovation by farmers, and the ability of farmers to innovate was influenced by a variety of factors such as institutional context, policy environment, and market forces.
The Horizon Europe funded project BroilerNet is aiming to closing this divide and strengthening research and innovation in the broiler sector through a new and interactive approach to innovation. BroilerNet created thirteen national level innovation networks of broiler farmers and other actors to address the challenges faced by broiler farmers in DE, EI, EL; ES; FI; FR; IT, NL, PL, PT, SE, SI and UK. Furthermore, three EU level networks are focusing around three main fields of concern: (1) environmental sustainability; (2) animal welfare; and (3) animal health management. Through a multi-actor approach, the most urgent Sector challenges of the European broiler farmers were be identified and the networks collected and evaluated good practices that are able to mitigate the Sector challenges. BroilerNet are in the process of also engage with existing and new broiler-focused EIP-AGRI Operational Groups and in order to enhance their impact. The selected best of good practices are spread through communication and dissemination activities to reach the vast majority of broiler farmers in the countries of the participating consortium partners, but also to all broiler farmers across Europe.