Wout Van Wolfswinkel has been president of ELPHA since 2018 and represents European day-old chick and hatching egg producers. This includes breeding companies, hatcheries, and exporters.

Mr Van Wolfswinkel has been in industry for 30 years, having started as a planner and export manager at a broiler hatchery and then working several years for a breeding company as their account sales manager for breeding stock covering the whole of Europe.

Since 2021 he has been working at De Heus feed company as their sales manager and is responsible for livestock in the broiler-breeding chain in the Netherlands.

Birthe Steenberg has been Secretary General of AVEC, The Voice of Europe’s Poultry Meat Sector since the beginning of 2017. The 19 members of AVEC are national organizations for the production of poultry meat in 17 different European countries. Previously, she worked as chief consultant in Agriculture & Food and from 2012 to 2017 she was the Manager of the Danish Poultry Meat Federation.

Birthe has a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Copenhagen and she is a member of The Executive Committee of the International Poultry Council – as well as of the following committees under the auspices of the EU Commission Animal Welfare Platform, European food security crisis preparedness and response mechanism, Advisory Group – Food Chain and Animal and Plant Health and Civil Dialog Group on Animal Products – Poultrymeat and Eggs.

After receiving his MSc in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Goettingen Jörg Hurlin began his career with Big Dutchman International in 2008, in the product management of alternative layer systems. He then became the head of the technical development and sales support department for “poultry meat and animal feeding systems”.

Mr Hurlin has been “Group Coordinator Technical Solutions” for the EW Holding Group since 2015 and is Managing Director for the subsidiary Agri Advanced Technologies (AAT).  AAT is responsible development of specialized application technologies for poultry breeding. Under Mr Hurlin AAT has placed nine sex determination units in different European layer hatcheries and have over 40 grading units running in breeder farms around the world.

Niamh is Professor of Animal Behaviour and Welfare at the School of Biological Sciences/Institute for Global Food Security, Queen’s University Belfast. Her research spans different farm animal species and much of it is funded by the agri-food industry. Environmental enrichment for poultry is a particular area of interest, and findings from this research programme have directly affected policy and practice in the UK and more widely. She and her team also work in the field of biosecurity and in the development of new technologies for welfare assessment (including machine vision tools and wearable sensor technology). Niamh completed a PhD in animal welfare at Queen’s University Belfast and has published over 70 scientific papers.

Tracey has been the Director of Compassion’s Food Business programme since 2013, overseeing its evolution and expansion, working with the world’s leading food companies across Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific. To date over 2.5 billion animals are set to lead better lives each year through the commitments of our corporate partners.

Tracey has an applied farm animal welfare research background, is passionate about making a real, lasting difference, for the welfare of animals reared for food and believes in the power of big business to effect change at scale and speed when committed to do so.