SAFO News, January 2007

Dear all SAFO subscribers,

The best wishes to all of you for a Happy New Year 2007. The SAFO project was completed in August 2006, but fortunately, activities still go on, and we find it relevant and important to continue with network activities.

There are some pieces of happy news from SAFO partners from the Autumn 2006 – and from the SAFO Network we congratulate.

David Younie, who has received an award for services to agriculture in North East Scotland as an appreciation for his good work from the Royal Northern Agricultural Society (RNAS). This is awarded each year to a person in the public eye who has made a major contribution to agriculture. Individuals are nominated in secret by various agricultural organisations and the RNAS Awards Committee selects the award winner. As you can see from this photo and newspaper article, David was very pleased to receive it, and since the nomination is secret, he was surprised when he was phoned about it.
Assoc. Prof. Ing. Olga Ondrašovičová, PhD, who has become a professor from 1st November 2006. She gave an inaugural lecture when entering her new position: “Ecological agriculture in relation to environmental protection and human health” presented on November 2nd, 2006, at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Košice. A small summary of her lecture can be found here: Summary (PDF).
Dr. Michael Walkenhorst, who defended his Ph.D. thesis "Vergleich von homöopathischer mit antibiotischer Laktationstherapie zur Behandlung von Mastitiden des Rindes" in November 2006 and graduated as a doctor. The thesis (abstract and full text) can be found via this link.

Congratulations to all of you!

All SAFO documents including the final report from SAFO now on our website

Proceedings from the 5th and final SAFO workshop, as well as all other documents which have been produced during the SAFO project are available on the website. We submitted our final SAFO report to the EU Commission in October 2006. All SAFO partners have received a paper copy of the final report including the appendices on a CD, but the final report (PDF) can also be downloaded from our website.

We will submit a proposal for a COST Action project ‘ROLF’ in March 2007

The value of international networks within the area of organic livestock production including all related areas like food quality, the concept of animal welfare, and the diversity in EU as well as on a global level was acknowledged greatly by SAFO participants, and a group of 43 different institutions among EU member countries and candidate countries submitted a proposal for a new network ‘Research in Organic Livestock Farming’ (ROLF) in late May 2006. We had a good review from the committee, but the amount of proposals was very high, and we did not receive funds. At the 5th and last SAFO workshop, we formed working groups to improve and make the suggestions within this proposed network more concrete and goal directed. We plan to submit a new proposal for an international network in March 2007.

The European Commision has published the first calls under the 7th framework

Althouth they are no direct headings in relation to organic livestock production some areas of the call in which agriculture is included (FP7-KBBE-2007-1) might be relevant to SAFO partners. Further details of the first call see: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html

With all the best wishes on behalf of the SAFO Steering Committee,

Mette Vaarst