Open AcceOral presentation Meeting the educational challenges to engage veterinarians in

Animal welfare research programs are seldom integrated into the mainstream activities carried out in schools of veterinary science. Our goal at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science (NVH) is to fully integrate our animal welfare research program with the training of veterinary students and with the regular activities carried out at the school. In my previous team we successfully developed a novel paradigm to teach animal welfare [1]. We harnessed a well-established and culturally accepted livestock judg-ing model in order to minimize the bias resulting from an inherent polarized and politicized view of animal welfare in the USA [1]. The animal welfare judging/assessment competition has revolutionized teaching of animal wel-fare in some animal science departments in the USA [1]. In my previous team we expanded the concept of virtua