VITAL — Vocational Innovation and Training for Animal Livestock
The livestock sector plays a vital role in the European economy, food security, and rural development. However, it faces profound transformations driven by environmental sustainability goals, digitalization, and evolving consumer expectations. These changes require a workforce equipped with new skills to support competitiveness, ensure social fairness, and enhance resilience—objectives that lie at the heart of the European Skills Agenda. The Pact for Skills, a key initiative of this agenda, emphasizes the importance of large-scale partnerships in guiding upskilling and reskilling efforts, ensuring that sectoral transitions are inclusive and aligned with labor market needs. As a sector of strategic importance, the livestock industry should leverage these frameworks to develop a comprehensive skills strategy that addresses both current and future challenges.
To this end, the international partnership VITAL (Vocational Innovation and Training for Animal Livestock) brings together 25 partners from 9 countries, representing Higher Education, Vocational Education and Training (VET), and the labor market. This multi-stakeholder collaboration provides a comprehensive skills intelligence approach that addresses both immediate workforce needs and long-term sectoral strategies.
The project aligns with the Blueprint for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills—a key initiative under the European Skills Agenda that fosters strategic cooperation among stakeholders to design and implement sector-specific skills strategies. In this context, VITAL aims to develop and implement a sector-wide skills strategy for the European livestock sector, define new occupational profiles at EQF levels 5 and 7, and design and update higher education and vocational training programs (EQF levels 3–8) tailored to emerging job roles within the sector.
As part of this initiative, courses will be organized to train and upskill personnel from third countries, thereby facilitating their entry into the labor market.
The project directly contributes to green and digital transitions while strengthening national and regional growth strategies.