Zoetis is Sole Animal Health Company in 22-Member PROHEALTH Research Consortium

Zoetis is proud to be the sole animal health company participant in PROHEALTH, a consortium of 22 research partners from 11 European countries coordinated by Newcastle University. PROHEALTH was recently awarded the largest grant ever given by the European Union (EU) in the Animal Health field (11.9M€) to explore ways to increase production quality while limiting environmental impact and preserving profitability for livestock farmers.

At Zoetis, we believe that collaborations are essential to driving innovation and fueling the insights that advance animal health. Participating in the PROHEALTH consortium enables our company to join forces with academic, industry and private enterprise organizations with complementary skills and technologies. Together, we will work to address production diseases of pigs and poultry raised in a wide range of intensive systems across the EU.

"All parties can benefit from the combined expertise and resources of what is probably the biggest poultry and pigs research network in the world at the moment. This is a great example of a private/public initiative to advance our scientific knowledge, respond to the challenges of the future for our world and improve animal health and welfare," said Alejandro Bernal, Executive Vice President and Area President, Europe, Africa and Middle East Region at Zoetis.

"The overarching aim of the five-year PROHEALTH project is to improve the competitiveness and sustainability of intensive pig and poultry farming in Europe. The key point of difference is a holistic approach focusing on understanding the multifactorial dimension of animal diseases linked to the intensification of production, and using this knowledge to develop, evaluate, and disseminate effective control and improvement strategies for reducing impact throughout the EU," said the Pro-Vice Chancellor of Newcastle University, Professor Steve Homans.

PROHEALTH will deliver novel diagnostics to predict the propensity of production-disease development in animals, communication tools for increasing awareness and sharing knowledge (such as e-learning), in addition to spearheading technological advances. Putting the multifactorial improvement strategies into practice will yield better quality products in an animal-welfare friendly manner, in line with economic and environmental sustainability, thereby improving modern pig and poultry farming systems across the EU, and also raising the bar for animal production worldwide.

For more information about Zoetis Innovation, visit http://www.zoetis.com/innovation.