Saskia Kliphuis has a passion for animal welfare. She finished her Masters Environmental Biology at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 as a specialist in behavioural biology and animal welfare and obtained her PhD in January 2025.
Her PhD research focused on improving laying hen welfare. She studied the effect of a light/dark cycle during incubation and enrichment with insect larvae during rearing on fearfulness and feather pecking. 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: 'Poultry and Pig in Low-input and Organic Production systems' Welfare' (http://www.ppilow.eu).
She will continue her efforts to improve animal welfare via research, education, policy, and societal activities. She will do so from her position at the division of Animals in Science and Society at the faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Since May 2025, she has been involved as a researcher in the Agroecology project , in which she investigates the effects of feeding fermented residual agricultural streams on the health and welfare of chickens and pigs. From January 2026 onwards, she will be Future Food Ambassador at 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 plans to use her ambassadorship to emphasize the role of animals in our food system more clearly on the map in research, education and in society. "As long as we continue to eat animals, animals will remain future food and we must take their interests into account."
Saskia will be on maternity leave from 11 July 2025 to 14 January 2026.