Concern Continues over Non-compliance with New Welfare Regulations

Concern is still rife among poultry producers in the UK over the potential inequalities that will exist in the industry across Europe when new welfare regulations come into force next year.

UK farming unions met this week to discuss how they can help protect the poultry industry when the Welfare of Laying Hens Directive comes into law from 1 January 2012.

The UK industry is concerned about the likely non-compliance of producers in some other European countries.

British farmers say they have spent an estimated £400 million to meet the rules, but the picture is less clear elsewhere and farmers in several EU countries will miss the January 2012 deadline.

According to figures from the European Commission, more than 11 million hens will still be housed in un-enriched cages when the EU ban comes into force.

In Russia, European Commission inspectors on a tour of facilities in the country have found that the controls on residues in animals, animal products and feeds is not equivalent to the EU.

The inspectors said that the Russian veterinary inspectors were restricted in the job by Russian federal law and the law made it impossible to have a federal programme for food safety monitoring and the state system of monitoring residues is complicated.

However, the EU inspectors said that the Rosselkhoznador labs were well equipped and the labs took part in international and inter-laboratory comparison tests.

Finally, El Sitio Avícola, the Spanish language website for the poultry industry, has launched its weekly newsletter.

This newsletter, which is published every Tuesday, includes a comment from Chris Wright, Editor, regarding the most important developments of the past week.

The newsletter also includes all the news published on the site for the last week, as well as all the technical and scientific features that ran.

This makes it very easy to find all the news and articles of interest.