Report Says Welfare during Transportation Falls Short in the EU

Although EU regulations have led to improving the welfare of animals when transported, more needs to be done to tighten up on enforcement, according to a new European Commission report.

The report looked at the effectiveness of Regulation (EC) 1/2005, implemented in January 2007, which ensures protection for animals during transport.

Overall, the Regulation has improved the welfare of animals transported but the report highlights the differences between Member States in terms of the progress they have made in implementing the Regulation.

With this in mind, the report recommends that the implementation, enforcement and infringement penalties within the EU should be harmonised and communications between Member States should be improved.

Also in the EU, more than €203 million has been earmarked to support programmes to eradicate, control and monitor animal diseases and zoonoses, aiming to further strengthen the protection of human and animal health in 2012.

The decision was taken at the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health (SCoFCAH), where Member States also unanimously endorsed the Commission proposals to contribute €11.5 million for the emergency measures and vaccination plans taken to combat some animal diseases over the past four years, which include Classical Swine Fever.

The latest quarterly statistics on the Canadian pig population reveal only small changes from a year ago although two per cent more pigs were sent for slaughter during the third quarter of this year than in the same period of 2010.

The first industrially produced vaccine against porcine cysticercosis is the aim of a new partnership between GALVmed, Indian Immunologicals Limited (IIL) and the University of Melbourne.

The tapeworm (Taenia solium) is a human parasite with the intermediate host being the pig. Globally, the parasite is estimated to cause 50 million human cases of taeniasis (infection with adult tapeworms) and cysticercosis, and 50,000 deaths a year in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The vaccine for pigs is the next step towards eradicating the disease in humans.

And finally, the Russian veterinary authority has reported two new outbreaks of African swine fever (ASF) in Rostov and Voronezh oblasts, which are in the far south-west of the country, not far from the border with Ukraine. A total of more than 9,000 pigs on the two farms were destroyed.

The authorities have shown that they are taking the risks of ASF seriously: in order to prevent pork infected with the ASF virus from entering Moscow, road-blocks have been set up on routes into the capital to check all trucks loaded with pork, and pigs have been taken from private households in Kursk for slaughter in order to reduce the spreading of the disease.