“As long as we continue to eat animals, we must take their interests into account.”

Research area: Animal behaviour, animal welfare, protein transition, science communication

Saskia aims to improve animal welfare, especially animals kept for food production (chickens, pigs and cows). She works at the division of Animals in Science and Society at the faculty of Veterinary Medicine. She teaches veterinary students about animal behaviour and welfare. In the European project VALORAGRO, she investigates the effects of feeding fermented residual agricultural crops on the health and welfare of chickens and pigs. She is ambassador of Future Food Utrecht (FFU), one of the communities within the strategic theme Pathways to Sustainability. In FFU, transdisciplinary collaboration takes place to answer the complex questions regarding our future food. Saskia uses her ambassadorship to emphasize the role of animals in our food system more clearly on the map in research, education and in society. 

Saskia obtained her PhD in January 2025 at UU. Her PhD thesis focused on improving chicken welfare. She studied the effect of a light/dark cycle during the brooding period and provisioning of insect larvae during rearing on behaviour and welfare of young laying hens. Besides this experimental work, she collaborated with Dutch small-scale and organic poultry farmers to tackle welfare issues straight from practice. Her research was part of the PPILOW project.

After her experiments, the chickens were adopted as pets. The local news channel RTV Utrecht visited the chicken stable on the adoption day.