The INTAQT project is based on a participatory approach. In fact, for the entire length of the project several meetings within each Country, called National groups, will be organized in order to receive different suggestions and expectations from the actors of the supply chain.

Accordingly, on November 29th, 2024 in Italy a unique national group as concerns chicken meat and dairy products were arranged in collaboration with UNIPG-OU, UNIBO-OU and UNIPD-OU. UNIPG-OU and UNIBO-OU were responsible for the chicken meat whereas, UNIPD-OU was in charge for the dairy products.  This meeting was done online, and a multi-actor group was constituted.

In fact, each participant had a different role in the chicken and dairy products supply chain. In particular, the multi-actor group included farmers, managers of the large organized distribution, experts in animal nutrition, veterinaries, category associations, association of organic productions, certify associations etc. The aim of this meeting was to share the preliminary results of the project obtained until now. In the first part a brief introduction of the project and a quickly explanation of the activity was provided then participants were divided by product (chicken or dairy) on the base of their expertise. In the Italian national group of chicken meat, managed by UNPG-OU and UNIBO-OU, preliminary results concerning the farm classification as well as nutritional, sensory and safety analyses were shown.  Doubts were expressed about the farm’s classification because within each category there were farms with different chicken genotypes and management procedures. However, no suggestion for classifying in different way the chicken rearing systems emerged by the multi-actor group.

Positive comments were expressed about the analyses performed and some participants suggested elaborating all the obtained data by considering the animal’s diet characteristics. Despite the fact that no results were shown about the animal welfare assessment during the final discussion the majority of the participants expressed interest in this aspect.

The proposal to introduce a multicriteria scoring tool, in order to attribute at each product a score, to easy interpretate the large amount of data obtained by the project was very appreciated by all the participants.