EU funded Concerted Action

FAIR 3 CT 96 1586

ELPEN - European Livestock Policy Evaluation Network

"Regional differences in livestock production systems: development of protocols and methodologies for policy evaluation and impact on rural development."

Aim:

The Concerted Action aims to establish a network of researchers throughout the EU who will consider whether a common framework can be devised within which it is possible to appraise and evaluate the economic, environmental and social impacts of livestock policies on a regional basis within the EU.

This will require a consideration of the ways in which livestock systems can be classified for different purposes, the attributes and indicators which need to be measured and recorded and the way in which data is stored, including an assessment of geographical scale.

Specific Objectives:

• Identify the needs of policy research in evaluating the impact of livestock policy;
• Identify sources and types of data needed to construct a spatially explicit regional description of livestock systems;
• Devise a protocol and methodology for describing the regional variation in livestock systems within the EU;
• Promote interaction between researchers from a range of disciplines, including policy researchers, animal scientists, socio-economists and geographers;
• Promote dialogue between policy makers and researchers.

ELPEN will achieve these objectives by:

• Holding a series of consultative meetings with policy makers involved in the appraisal of livestock policy in the European Commission and a number of different EU Member States;
• Holding three workshops for researchers involved in different aspects of livestock policy related research:
  

• Workshop 1 - Identification of types of livestock system
  
  This will involve establishing sets of indicators / characteristics which can be used to describe livestock systems and in the future which can be incorporated into models to evaluate the impact of policy changes.
  
• Workshop 2 - Refinement of a protocol for describing and characterising livestock systems across the EU
  
• Workshop 3 - Feed back to policy makers
  

• Establishing a Protocol Working Group, which will meet after each workshop with the aim of drawing together the different elements of the project and assessing how to develop a protocol for describing the regional variation in livestock systems within the EU.

More information on the ELPEN network can be obtained from:

Susan Williams, Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Craigiebuckler,

Aberdeen AB15 8QH, Scotland, UK. Tel: +44 1224 381 611, Fax:+44 1224 311 556,

E-mail: s.williams@macaulay.ac.uk