HSA is recognised internationally for promoting scientific advances towards improving the welfare of food animals worldwide (e.g. mammals, birds, fish, etc) during their transport, marketing, slaughter or killing.
As part of its endeavours to encourage high quality science that is likely to lead to substantial advances in animal welfare in these areas, the HSA is running a scheme to award a HSA Animal Welfare Research Training Scholarship to enable a promising veterinary graduate to undertake a three-year program of research leading to a PhD degree.
The award will be for a maximum of £110,000.
The HSA wishes to encourage research in the areas listed below, but also welcomes other projects aimed at improving the well-being of animals that are farmed for food, during their transport, marketing, slaughter or killing for disease control and other welfare reasons. These include:
- development of improved or novel methods of stunning animals
- refinements in electrical stunning of turkeys, ducks and geese
- improvements in fasting, handling, transport and slaughter procedures for fish
- refinement of existing, or development of novel, methods of assessing states of consciousness, enabling correlations of neurological activity with animal behavior and physiology
- refinements to electrical stunning methods, to improve both animal welfare and meat quality.
Applications are invited from veterinary students that will graduate shortly, or veterinarians who have graduated recently, particularly if the university has a UFAW/HSA University ‘LINK’ person (see www.ufaw.org.uk/links-news-events.php for more information, or to enquire about becoming a LINK person for your university).
Applications for this award will be a two-stage process. Initially, supervisors are required to submit a brief concept note by 19 November 2014. The concept note application form is available to download from www.hsa.org.uk, or on request from info@hsa.org.uk.
Following assessment of these concept notes, selected applicants will be invited (in mid-December 2014) to submit a more detailed proposal prepared jointly by the supervisor and the PhD candidate. These completed detailed proposals must be submitted to the HSA by 23 January 2015.
