Dutch applied research SME running farm-scale pig nutrition trials to develop and validate practical alternatives to veterinary antibiotics.
Schothorst Feed Research is a Dutch applied research SME specializing in animal nutrition, feed formulation, and livestock health — with a particular focus on pigs. Their core work involves designing and conducting farm trials to test how specific feed ingredients and strategies affect animal growth, gut health, and disease resistance. In recent EU-funded work, they have concentrated on finding practical, farm-ready replacements for veterinary antibiotics, evaluating options such as bacteriophages, immunostimulants, and gut stabilizers under real production conditions. They occupy a distinctive niche: not a university lab, not a feed manufacturer, but a bridge organization that translates nutritional science into commercially applicable protocols that farmers and feed companies can actually use.
Both CARTNET (AMR training network) and AVANT (direct testing of bacteriophages, gut stabilizers, and immunostimulants in pigs) demonstrate sustained focus on reducing antibiotic use in livestock.
AVANT explicitly involves feed strategies and farm trials as core methodology, reflecting Schothorst's operational capability to run controlled nutritional experiments at farm scale.
AVANT keywords include gut stabilizers, diarrhoea management, and respiratory disease — conditions directly linked to gut microbiome integrity in pig production.
Bacteriophages appear as a distinct keyword in AVANT, indicating Schothorst is actively involved in evaluating this emerging biological alternative to antibiotics.
Participation in CARTNET (Combatting Antimicrobial Resistance Training Network) as a third-party partner shows engagement in the AMR research community beyond applied trials.
Schothorst entered H2020 participation through CARTNET, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie training network focused on building research capacity around antimicrobial resistance — a supporting, educational-context role with no direct project funding. Their trajectory shifted meaningfully with AVANT (2020–2025), where they appear as a funded participant running concrete farm trials to test specific biological alternatives to antibiotics in pig production. The progression is from background AMR awareness and network-building toward frontline applied research: testing real interventions, with real animals, on real farms. The trend is one of deepening operational specialization rather than broadening thematic scope.
Schothorst is moving toward being a primary execution partner for farm-scale trials testing biological and nutritional AMR alternatives — a role that will remain in demand as EU antibiotic reduction regulations tighten through 2030.
Schothorst has not led any H2020 projects as coordinator — they operate as a specialist contributor within consortia built and led by others. Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 25 unique consortium partners across 11 countries, which suggests they join large, multi-partner Innovation Actions rather than small bilateral collaborations. This pattern indicates they are valued for their specific farm trial and feed research capabilities rather than for project management or administrative leadership.
Schothorst has connected with 25 unique partners across 11 countries through just two projects, reflecting the large consortium structures typical of H2020 Innovation Actions like AVANT. Their network is European in scope, likely including veterinary institutes, feed companies, universities, and farm operators from across the EU livestock sector.
Schothorst Feed Research occupies a rare position in the EU research landscape: an independent, SME-scale organization with the infrastructure to run controlled feeding trials on live farm animals — something universities typically cannot do and large feed multinationals do internally without publishing results. For consortia working on livestock nutrition or veterinary alternatives, they provide the applied validation layer that converts laboratory hypotheses into farm-level evidence. Their independence from both academia and commercial feed production makes their trial data credible to regulators, farmers, and industry alike.
