Partners & Speakers /

Partner organisations

We are collaborating with different national and international organisations. The organisations below are contributing to the didactic content of the 2nd IVSA Animal Welfare Conference.

Partner organisations

World Organisation for Animal Health (OiE)

World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA)

Federation of Veterinarians in Europe (FVE)

Federation of European Companion Animal Veterinary Association (FECAVA)

Veterinarians without Borders (FSV Germany)

Jeanne Marching International Centre for Animal Welfare Education (JMICAWE)

biocrime

Welttierschutzgesellschaft e.V. (WTG)

Leipzig University, Germany

Berlin University, Germany

Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Bristol University, UK

Centre for Animal Welfare, University of Winchester, UK

Tierärztliche Vereinigung für Tierschutz (TVT)

Wild Welfare

ProTest

IVSA - Standing Committee on Animal Welfare (SCAW)

IVSA - Training new Trainers (TNT)

Speakers

In case you are using your phone: To see the introductions of all speakers, please change to the desktop version of the website!

Prof. Cathy Dwyer

lecture "Maternal behaviour and offspring development"

workshop "How can we recognise and measure animal suffering?"

Cathy is a biologist, with research interests in animal behaviour and physiology, particularly relating to animal development and animal welfare. She has a degree in Physiology from University of Bristol, and a PhD in prenatal development from the Royal Veterinary College in London. In 1994 she moved to Edinburgh to take up a post-doctoral research position at the Scottish Agricultural College investigating the impact of mother-offspring relationships on lamb survival. In 2011 she was appointed Professor of Animal Behaviour and Welfare at SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College) and leads one of the largest farm animal welfare research groups in the world. Since 2016 she combines this with the role of Director of the Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education at the University of Edinburgh’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.

Cathy has wide-ranging research interests including mother-offspring interactions, behavioural development, vocal behaviour, human-animal interactions, pain and pain mitigation and welfare assessment, primarily of farmed livestock. In 2013 she received the prestigious BSAS/RSPCA award for Innovative Developments in Animal Welfare, for her work to understand the role played by the behaviour of mother and young in improving the survival of newborn animals. Cathy teaches on the University of Edinburgh’s MSc programmes in Applied Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare, and the online programme in International Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law. She supervises the work of many PhD students, and is currently involved in developing a new BSc course in Veterinary Nursing with colleagues at SRUC, and a new BSc in Animal Science with the Global Academy for Food Security at University of Edinburgh.

Dr. Jan van der Valk

lecture "Issues with the use of foetal bovine serum in research, cultured meat and other areas"

Prof. Andrew Knight

lectures "Climate change: the livestock connection" and "Vegetarian Versus Meat-Based Diets for Companion Animals"

workshop "Professional careers in animal advocacy"

Meg Rawlins

lecture "How can veterinary students impact animal welfare?"

workshop "Student perceptions of Animal Welfare"

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Andrew Grist

lecture "Humane dispatch of on-farm neonate piglets, lambs and kids"

Boaz Abraham

lecture "Welfare in rural areas"

Reiko Rackwitz

lecture "Physiological aspects of production animals - did we cross the red line?"

Dr. Jan van der Valk is trained in biomedical sciences. He was involved in establishing the Netherlands Centre for Alternatives to Animal experiments in 1994 and has been involved in stimulating the development, acceptation and implementation of 3Rs models ever since. Since 2010, he coordinates the 3Rs-Centre Utrecht Life Sciences (www.uu.nl/3rscentreuls) at the Utrecht University and University Medical Centre Utrecht. He is the co-organiser of the laboratory animal science course in Utrecht. In addition, he supervises the establishment of several species-specific courses at the faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Utrecht University.
The 3Rs-Centre ULS further supports the 3Rs, among other activities, by the 3Rs-database program. This program offers free online access to the Humane Endpoints database (https://www.humane-endpoints.info), the Interspecies database (https://www.interspeciesinfo.com/) and the Foetal Calf Serum free database (https://fcs-free.org/).

Andrew Knight is a Professor of Animal Welfare and Ethics, and Founding Director of the Centre for Animal Welfare, at the University of Winchester; a EBVS European and RCVS Veterinary Specialist in Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law; an American & New Zealand Veterinary Specialist in Animal Welfare; a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and a Senior Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.

Andrew has over 65 academic publications and a series of YouTube videos on animal issues. These include an extensive series examining the contributions to human healthcare of animal experiments, which formed the basis for his 2010 PhD and his 2011 book The Costs and Benefits of Animal Experiments. Andrew’s other publications have examined the contributions of the livestock sector to climate change, vegetarian companion animal diets, the animal welfare standards of veterinarians, and animal cognitive and related abilities, and the resultant moral implications. His informational websites include www.AnimalExperiments.info, www.HumaneLearning.info and www.VegePets.info.

I am Meg Rawlins and I am a final year Veterinary Student at the Royal Veterinary College, London and have just started my term as chair of the IVSA Standing Committee on Animal Welfare for 2018-19. I am interested in many areas of Veterinary Medicine; in particular Animal Welfare, One Health and Disease Control and how these tie in to Policy Making on a national and international level. Although interested in Production Animal Medicine; I aim to pursue a career in the non-clinical aspect of veterinary medicine.

I first became involved with IVSA as a member the Publications Team of the Standing Committee of Animal Welfare 2 years ago. I had very little prior knowledge of the scale of the IVSA network and its work; however I was passionate about animal welfare issues and wanted to make a difference. Seeing the vast impact which we could have as a collaborative organisation inspired me; veterinary students are the forefront of change and advocacy within the animal world and through harnessing our potential through IVSA we can work together to bring improved education, increasing awareness and change to animal welfare.

2 years on from joining SCAW I have just started my term as Chair for 2018-19 and I look forward to continuing on from our achievements in recent years.

In addition to being Chair of SCAW; I also hold a position on the IVSA Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) who are in charge of reviewing IVSA’s previous 5 year Strategic Plan and creating a new Strategic Plan for the upcoming 5 years.

I am the Teaching Fellow in Veterinary Public Health at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

In addition to lecturing on the subject of products of animal origin, I also lecture on parasitology and welfare at slaughter. I am the tutor of the University of Bristol Animal Welfare Officer course, which provides knowledge transfer to industry, NGO’s and government officials on the science behind welfare at slaughter and how to improve welfare of meat animals destined for slaughter. I have a special interest in mechanical stunning and have one of the largest privately-owned collections of historical stunning and humane killing devices in the United Kingdom.

The main focus of my research is in animal welfare at slaughter, but primarily the last four years have been spent researching reliable and immediate mechanical methods for humane dispatch of neonates on farm.

I have been very fortunate to have spent the last 12 years teaching at the University of Bristol and have been overwhelmed to have received three teaching awards voted for by students including the Students’ Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Faculty of Health Sciences and “Best of Bristol”.

Born and raised in Israel, I moved to Berlin at 2009 to study veterinary medicine.

After Graduation (2015), I moved to Zurich, Switzerland, for the purpose of my doctorate thesis at the MSRU (Muscular and Skeletal Research Unit, Vetsuisse Faculty, UZH Zurich).

Since 2017 I work as a veterinarian at the Department for farm animals, Devision of Ambulatory Service and Herd health.

The First time I got to know VSFG (Vétérinaires sans Frontìeres Germany) was as a student. After participating in a field study in Kenya, supported by VSFG, I was enchanted by this NGO and decided to join it. After volunteering for some time as a student, I was elected as a member of the board of directors at 2014.

Nowadays along side my administrative duties as a board member, I spend much of my energy especially in the field of PR, education and working with students.

Reiko Rackwitz achieved his diploma in biology in 2005 at the University of Leipzig working on a project dealing with the distribution and ecology of ground living spiders. In 2007, he became a staff member of the Institute of Veterinary Physiology in Leipzig. Since then, his scientific work focuses on the mechanisms of nutrient absorption from the gastrointestinal tract of different animals, mainly ruminants. In 2012, he acquired the doctor’s degree with a thesis addressing the electrogenic permeation of short-chain fatty acids across the rumen epithelium.

Reiko is head of the organizing bureau of the Leipzig Veterinary Congress and editor in chief of the “Leipziger Blaue Hefte”. He is also a member of the local organizing committee of the International Symposium on Ruminant Physiology (ISRP) to be held in Leipzig in 2019.

Prof. Christoph K W Mülling

lecture "Claw health and animal welfare"

workshop "Claw health and animal welfare"

Christoph Mülling is a Veterinarian and a clinical Anatomist with a passion for teaching and lameness research. He graduated as DVM in 1988 from the Free University in Berlin, Germany. After six years in a large animal practice, he returned to the Free University earning a German Dr. med. vet. degree in 1993. Subsequently he received his Post-Doc training in Berlin, Cornell and Japan. Since then he has been active with academic research and teaching. In 2006, Mülling accepted a position as associated professor in Clinical Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Nottingham in 2007. He joined the University of Calgary as a professor of veterinary anatomy, serving as the associated dean curriculum from 2008 to 2010. In May 2010 he accepted a position as professor of veterinary anatomy at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Leipzig, were he currently is active in research and teaching and serves as Associate Dean Academic of the Faculty. Müllings interdisciplinary research ties in clinical applied and clinical work with basic sciences. His group is working mainly in two areas: 1. pathogenesis and pathomechanisms of diseases of the bovine, equine and porcine foot and biomechanics and locomotion analysis in cattle, horses and pigs; 2. Morphological and in vitro research on skin in different spezies including birds and 3. research in Veterinary Education. He continues to be passionately engaged in teaching. His team is developing multimedia enhanced teaching materials designed for integrated teaching of clinical anatomy.

Prof. Thomas Blaha is the President of the German Veterinary Animal Welfare Association (TVT), as well as Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Veterinary Medicine of Hanover. His areas of expertise are research and teaching of veterinary public health, food safety “from farm to table”, Good
Veterinary Practice (GVP), animal health and epidemiology in the area of food animals. He is also a Member of the Advisory Board of the German Quality Management System “QS” for the
food chain from feed to food. Prof. Blaha is also involved in the development of animal-oriented animal welfare indicators at herd and slaughterhouse level, the reduction of antimicrobial resistance and veterinary ethics.

Prof. Thomas Blaha

lecture "Veterinary Ethics and the German Ethics Codex for Veterinarians"

Prof. Thomas Richter

lecture "Minimising ammonia in pig barns to improve Animal Welfare and reduce air pollution"

Dr. Wendy Phillips & Carolin Breitenbach

lecture "VETS UNITED - An education programme to improve animal welfare where most needed"

Prof. Gerhard Oechtering

lecture "Brachycephaly"

Nancy Erickson

lecture "Culture of Care in Laboratory Animal Science"

lecture "We need to talk - Communicating Animal Experiments in Public"

Dr. Marie-Christin Rossmann

lecture "Diseases transmitted by animals and illegal pet trade in the Alpe Adria region"

Siraya Chunekamrai, PhD

lecture "Superman or Clark Kent – who saves the world?"

workshop "Generating a collective action for animal welfare"

Isaac Corderroure López

workshop "Working in Animal Welfare: Soft-skills to build your own path"

Gonçalo Carito

workshop "Working in Animal Welfare: Soft-skills to build your own path"

Georgina Groves

lecture "Sentience, Behaviour and Animal Welfare in Zoos and Aquariums"

Monique Megens

lecture "Extreme breeding of dogs"

workshop "Extreme breeding of dogs"

Leopoldo H. Stuardo Escobar

lecture "OIE Animal Welfare Strategies"

Dr. Rebecca Holmes

lecture "Animal welfare during slaughter - an outlook on the current development of electrical stunning of pigs"

Olivia Dimov

lecture "Brachycephaly project"

Prof. Thomas Richter is a certified specialist for official veterinary services, for animal welfare and ethology. He has been working in public veterinary service and as Professor for animal husbandry, animal health and ethology. He will also be representing the German Animal Welfare Association (TVT).

Carolin Breitenbach is the Project Coordinator of Welttierschutzgesellschaft (Vets United). After her vet studies in Germany and Spain, she has been working as assistant veterinarian at El Refugio Foundation, Wildlife
Rehabilitation Center in Colombia, and afterwards in Germany as a veterinary surgeon.

The passion for the animals runs like a red thread through Dr. med. Wendy Phillip's life: Started with a veterinary medicine study, her first practice as a veterinarian was in a center for injured and / or confiscated wildlife. She continued as a veterinary conduit in free castration clinics, vaccinations and veterinary treatments for domestic animals and livestock in Africa and a little later for stray cats and dogs in Thailand. Today she leads the program VETS UNITED.

Gerhard Oechtering studied veterinary medicine at the Free University of Berlin and qualified in 1983. Later he became senior lecturer in surgical intensive care and anesthesiology at the Veterinary Department of the Justus Liebig University, Giessen. He serves at Professor and Head of the Department of Small Animals at the University of Leipzig since 1994, and was a visiting professor at the University of Tennessee in 2008.

In 2002 he founded a multidisciplinary research group focusing on brachycephaly. His special interests are minimal-invasive surgery, laser surgery in the ENT and urological field and breeding-related ENT problems.

Gerhard was repeatedly invited as a speaker from several European and American colleges to talk on brachycephaly, ENT topics or Laser surgery and he is also recognized as national specialist for Veterinary Surgery and Otorhinolaryngology.

Nancy Erickson studied Veterinary Medicine at the Freie Universität Berlin where she continued working as a research assistant at the Institute of Veterinary Pathology, obtained her Veterinary Pathologist degree, and completed her Ph.D. thesis. She has worked both in vivo with a mouse model of ulcerative colitis and ex vivo using murine alveolar and bone marrow macrophage cell cultures.
She proceeded working as an Animal Welfare Officer for the German Rheumatism Research Center, Freie Universität Berlin (Institute of Animal Welfare, Animal Behavior, and Laboratory Animal Science), and Humboldt University Berlin and is currently in training for her Laboratory Animal Science specialist degree. Besides, she is working on an in vitro-based doctoral thesis focusing on protein expression profile analysis in asthmatic feline airways and is involved in several other research projects.
In her free time, she serves as a member of Pro-Test Germany, a non-profit association in which students, veterinarians, animal care takers, and scientists get involved in their free time to share their experiences with animal research and their own decisions directly with others. For this purpose, public events are held, online and offline enquiries from interested people are answered, information and educational material is made available and public relations work is carried out. The discussion of professional and ethical questions is consciously and candidly conducted in a personal and independent manner.

Dr. Rossmann studied veterinary medicine in Vienna (Austria) and conducted her doctorate at the Institute for Physiology in Zurich, Switzerland. Afterwards, Dr. Rossmann worked at the vet faculty in Pretoria in South Africa for six month.
Since 1994, she is working for the Carinthian government, where she is responsible for infectious diseases, international animal trade and animal welfare. She attended various EU further education courses about animal transportation and fish pathology. Dr. Rossmann is also the Carinthian head of the Interreg Italy-Austria-Project Biocrime.

Dr. Chunekamrai fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming an animal doctor as she was accepted into the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Kasetsart university and upon graduation received a scholarship to further her studies at Cornell University. Her research and interests were in equine medicine and surgery, the field in which she based her practice on once she returned to Thailand in 1989.

Apart from her 2 practices, The Animal Farm Veterinary Hospital and the Horsepital Equine Surgery the first equine hospital in Thailand, she has founded the Lampang Pony Welfare Foundation and has expanded its work to include the formation of the Cambodia Pony Welfare Organization in 2008. Both foundations’ work focuses on improving the care and welfare of horses through Human Behavior Change methods and involves sustainable change in local communities.

She is internationally recognized in the equine field, and was the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI) contact veterinarian for Thailand from 1996-2011. She was President of the Veterinary Commission for the 13th Asian Games in Bangkok in the year 1998 and chairperson of the Asian Racing Conference Veterinary Program in 2001. She joined the World Equine Veterinary Association Executive Board in 2011 and In 2013-2015 she was invited to serve as a member of the Veterinary Committee of the FEI responsible for policy and decision making in matters pertaining to veterinary issues in the equestrian sport.

For Thailand’s professional development, her activities involved serving in elected positions in the Veterinary Practitioner Association of Thailand (VPAT) as well as President for 2 consecutive terms from 2007-2011. At present she holds the position of Vice President of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) and chairs the WSAVA One Care Initiative.

Isaac was born and raised in a small town of the Catalan Pyrenes. Probably, he was one of those kids who always wanted to become a veterinarian. Not so many years ago, he decided to move to Barcelona to study Veterinary Medicine.
He joined IVSA in 2012, and since then he has been working on several positions and projects on the local and the global board of the organization. He is currently co-coordinating a Trainers Group that aims to spread soft-skills training education among veterinary students worldwide.
He obtained his diploma in 2017 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. After that, he worked as a practitioner and now he is working within the veterinary pharmaceutical business.
His main interests within Veterinary Medicine are Animal Welfare, Pharmacology, education and business.

Gonçalo is graduated from the Lisbon Technical University (IST), with a Master in Engineering and a major in Peer-to-Peer and Cloud Computing.
He works as a Data Scientist at Siemens Mobility in Munich, after being a researcher in speech processing and machine learning at INESC-ID, and being the main Data Scientist in two different startups in the Lisbon scenario.
During his studies, he received a training as a trainer by Zero Generation and contributed with different soft-skill topics at several student and professional organizations as EMSA, EFPSA, EESTEC, BEST, and IEEE, among others. His main experience is with the topics of Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, and Communication; skills as well practiced in different volunteering roles as, for example, Vice-Chair of the IST Student Branch of IEEE, President of Taguspark Speakers Toastmasters Club, and Coordinator of IEEE Academic.
During his professional path, he has also been a freelancing consultant in Data Science, and a trainer in hard-skills topics as Python Foundations, Python for Data Science, among others.
He is an enthusiastic writer, in his free time, and has been using poetry in his training sessions as well.
Gonçalo loves to bring together the analytical and emotional perception of the world.

Georgina is Wild Welfare’s Project Director. Her experience focuses on bringing together a range of stakeholders and encouraging the integration of global partners and peer organisations with both peripheral and tangible interests in animal welfare. She has more than 15 years of experience working for animal welfare, research and conservation organisations, including Bristol University Research, The Natural History Museum, London, World Animal Protection and the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Georgina is an experienced, strategic project director and campaigner with extensive experience in national and international animal welfare issues. Her expertise includes managing key critical relationships for campaigns and working with organizations that have international dependencies, encouraging cross-functional working practices through the incorporation of all senior stakeholders.

Georgina has developed a range of educational and welfare resources, including specific captive animal welfare assessment methodology. She has developed and run international workshops in animal welfare training as well as in-house campaign strategy and community development training to smaller NGOs.

Georgina is a SSN Animals in Captivity Working Group member and is on the Zoological Society of London’s animal welfare committee member. She is also an International Veterinary Student Association Animal Welfare Committee Patron.

Monique Megens graduated from Utrecht University in 1998, and started her career as a small animal veterinary surgeon in The Netherlands. In 2008 she sold her clinic and started working as an independent project manager, setting up a new Continuous Professional Development (CPD) organisation for companion animal veterinarians at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Monique has been involved in veterinary politics in Europe for many years, first representing The Netherlands Association for Companion Animal Vets at European level and later on as a FECAVA board member. She is the past president of the Federation of European Companion Animal Veterinary Associations (FECAVA), having served as its president from October 2013 to October 2015.
Currently she is member of the joint Union of European Veterinary Practitioners (UEVP) & Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE) Animal Welfare Working Group, in which she is involved in the companion animal topics. She was responsible for the joint FVE/UEVP/FECAVA position paper on stray dogs, the position paper on dog trade and recently the position paper on the responsible breeding of dogs. Monique has been a speaker on these topics at many European conferences. Recently she also joined the World Small Animal Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) Hereditary Disease Committee.
Monique has a passion for companion animal welfare. She dedicates much of her time to help raise awareness, to liaise between stakeholders and to help ensure companion animal welfare is high on the international agenda.

Leopoldo graduated from the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Chile and obtained his master’s degree in environmental science and Management from the Catholic University of Louvain (LLN) in Belgium. Leopoldo has a broad experience working at national and international level dealing with sanitary negotiations related to trade and in developing international animal welfare standards. Leopoldo has been developed these activities at the Agriculture and Livestock Service (SAG) from the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture, at the Chilean Mission to the European Union in Brussels and at the Headquarters of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in Paris. Currently, Leopoldo is working at the Standards Department of the OIE, in charge of the animal welfare activities related to the OIE Terrestrial and Aquatic Animal Health Code.

After her doctorate at the LMU in Munich, Dr. Rebecca Holmes has been working in an animal hospital for several years. She then became an official veterinarian in a local office in Bavaria and afterwards at the Ministry for Rural Affairs and Consumer Protection.

Dr. Holmes currently works at the Bavarian Inspection Authority for Food Safety and Veterinary Affairs and is a specialist for public veterinary affairs.

At present, she is responsible for inspections in slaughterhouses, cutting plants and large poultry husbandries in northern Bavaria.

She has been carrying out trainings for animal welfare and food safety on a national level since 2006 and has published several papers on animal welfare during slaughter.

Dr. Holmes is also the head of the working group for animal welfare during slaughter within the Tierärztliche Vereinigung für Tierschutz (TVT)/Veterinary association for animal welfare. This group consisting of official veterinarians and scientists publishes surveys and expert reports on animal welfare issues during killing and slaughter for official veterinarians and steakholders. Those reports are widely recognised within circles of experts and are generally approved by courts.

Olivia Dimov is in her third year of veterinary studies at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany and a member of the Animal Welfare Working Group of this faculty. Before she started her studies she worked at the Small Animal Clinic of Leipzig University. In addition to her interest in animal welfare, she currently works in a small animal practice and wants to specialize in small animal medicine. In her presentation, Olivia will talk about the recent work of the Animal Welfare Team concerning brachycephalic dog breeds.

Dr. Silvia Blahak is a certified specialist in virology and of reptiles and amphibians.

After her studies of veterinary medicine in Giessen, she wrote her doctoral thesis about Paramyxoviruses in snakes and the characterization of some isolates. She then worked at the institute for avian diseases and later on became head of the clinic for reptiles and amphibians in Giessen. Currently, Dr. Blahak serves as head of the department of animal diseases in the laboratory of the state in Detmold. She is a member of the board of TVT since 2007, as well as a member of the working group of Amphibian and Reptilian Veterinarians of the German herpetological society. Dr. Blahak also works in a commission of experts establishing minimal requirements of keeping reptiles in Germany.

Dr. Silvia Blahak

lecture "Animal Welfare in keeping and breeding Reptiles and Amphibians"