November has been an eventful month, starting with our meeting with the competent authorities in Vienna. There were 24 participants from 18 EU member states. Extra special, because it was our first face to face meeting!

Highlights included a world café based on topics submitted by participants in advance of the meeting. The organisers of the meeting looked for synergies between the submitted topics and our current work programme, resulting in three key themes: painful procedures, fitness for transport and handling/stockpersonship. Participants, using colour coded note paper (yellow for ruminants and blue for equines), recorded their key issues for each theme and were then invited to self-assign to a theme discussion group to further discuss the noted issues.

You can follow us on X (Twitter) to find out more about the other talks in the meeting.