On August 22-24, 2022, a series of meetings were held with representatives of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences that were held at Khazar university and then at the Khazar University Conference and Leisure Center. The meeting was attended by founder of Khazar University, Professor Hamlet Isakhanli, rector of the university assoc.prof. Irada Khalilova, assoc.prof. Saida Sharifova, dean of the Graduate School of Science, Art and Technology, deputy dean assoc.prof. Mahammad Eldarov, assoc.prof. Saltanat Aghayeva, head of the Department of Life Sciences, assoc.prof. of the department Javid Ocaği and coordinator Ayaz Mammadov. Khazar university researchers of the life science team collected information about the current situation in Azerbaijan and presented them at the meeting. During the meeting, Hallvard Wie gave a presentation about their university and assoc.prof. Galia Zamaratskaia detailed information about the nature and main goals of the project. Within the framework of the project, assoc.prof. Ayaz Mammadov presented the survey results collected from farmers about the welfare of animals in different regions of Azerbaijan.

Khazar University is one of the partners of the project titled “Happy ANIMals for Sustainable Production and Consumption” (project acronym – HAnimSPAC) funded by the SI funding program on the "Academic collaboration in the Baltic Sea region”, offering funding to Swedish universities, for projects with their partners in a number of countries, among them Azerbaijan. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences successfully applied for the funding. The aim is to strengthen the macro-regional experience-sharing and joint development of practices, methodology, and capacity for internationalization within higher education and research.

Partner organizations are from countries in the Baltic region (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), as well as Ukraine and Azerbaijan:

• Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
• Lithuanian University of Health Science
• Estonian University of Life Science
• Latvia University of Agriculture
• The National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
• Poltava State Agrarian Academy, Poltava, Ukraine
• Khazar University, Baku, Azerbaijan

This is a small project (for about 1.5 years) to study the current situation in partners’ countries, opinions of farmers and consumers regarding the importance of animal welfare, identify major issues and evaluate the economic impact of animal welfare, organizing both a physical and an online symposium to follow up on the results, identifying further actions and preparing an outline for a proposal for a project within the EU framework program Horizon Europe. The project officially started on 21 September. A kick-off meeting was planned for September 2021 in Uppsala, but it didn’t happen due to ongoing Covid restrictions. The first meeting took place online (via zoom) in October 2021. The next meeting will take place at end of September 2022 at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala.