Animal Welfare Research Network

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Animal welfare continues to be an important issue for many members of the public. In a 2016 Eurobarometer survey of nearly 28,000 EU citizens, 94% believed that it was important to protect the welfare of farmed animals, and 57% said that it was very important to do so (Special Eurobarometer 442, 2016). A consequence is that debates on animal usage and animal welfare can be highly charged and emotive affairs, open to the influence of vested interests and biased argument. However, decisions by government and other stakeholders for future directions need to be based on information that is as unbiased and objective as possible. This information comes from systematic and scientific animal welfare research. A strong and sustained animal welfare research community is thus essential to underpin well-informed decisions that maintain and improve welfare. To achieve greater interaction and cohesion within the UK animal welfare research community (probably the largest of its kind in the world), the Animal Welfare Research Network (AWRN) was set up in 2016. Since that time, its membership has grown to nearly 500, including animal welfare researchers but also neuroscientists, immunologists, social and political scientists and other academics, alongside representatives from charities, industry, research funding organisastions, policy-makers and government. Surveys indicate that members have benefitted by forming new collaborations, improving their skills as a researcher, improving their understanding of animal welfare research, becoming more aware of opportunities in the area, and achieving grant success.In the next phase of the AWRN, we aim to continue and develop our activities including: (i) running 2-day annual meetings which incorporate networking activities, workshops (e.g. grant-writing), and research spotlight sessions with invited speakers; (ii) developing our early career researcher (ECR) activities to stimulate, encourage and mentor ECRs to develop into the next generation of PIs leading research grants applications and establishing animal welfare research groups (e.g. via researcher-exchange and cross-institute PhD training and mentoring); (iii) funding 3 member-led workshops per year to bring together animal welfare researchers and stakeholders / researchers in other relevant areas to discuss emerging topics of interest, run training sessions, and develop new contacts (at least one of these will be ring-fenced for ECRs each year); (iv) maintaining and developing our website (awrn.co.uk) with a particular focus on encouraging use of the internal-facing members area for discussion, sharing of information on methods, skills, new technologies, and findings; (v) further increasing membership, including exploring the potential for internationalisation with the support of a potential Network co-funder (UFAW); (vi) exploring future funding opportunities, including with UFAW and also bodies such as OpenPhilanthropy which has started to fund animal welfare-related projects, and considering the imposition of joining or subscription fees.