Developing recommendations for preventive animal health farm visits in the EU

Abstract

Let’s prevent more outbreaks, let’s prevent more animals getting sick. The fight against transmissible diseases and to strive for better food safety are very important for EU countries. Therefore, in 2016 the European Union adopted the ‘Animal Health Law’ (EU, 2016). To support the key priorities - higher food safety, greater prevention and fighting against transmissible diseases - this law contains Article 25 (Animal Health visits). In this article, the EU requires that all operators shall ensure that their establishments receive regular animal health visits from a veterinarian. These suggested ‘animal health visits’ should be implemented by 2021 and cover all aspect of disease prevention - in particular biosecurity and detection of diseases. This study was set up (1) to identify the percentage of farms and livestock that already receive preventive visits, (2) to identify the impact of animal health visits on animal health and welfare, biosecurity, food safety and use of medicine on European farms and (3) to identify the minimum requirements for a uniform application of preventive animal health farm visits. To study this, a questionnaire was distributed amongst European national veterinary organisations. Results show that so far, in 10 out of 24 countries, already 100% of the farms will be visited regularly for disease prevention purposes. Across the 24 countries studied, an average of 77,8% of all livestock farms carry out preventive animal health farm visits. Pig farms are visited relatively the most: an average of 83,8% of the farms of the countries studied. For cattle, poultry and small ruminant farms, this percentage was respectively 79,4%, 79% and 67,7%. However it is recognized that there is a large spread of coverage between farms and between countries. It was noted that different sort of visits existed, namely 1) mandatory visits (legislation, demanded by government), 2) semi – mandatory visits (no legislation, but necessary for use of prescriptive medicine or to sell products) and 3) voluntary visits (no legislation, but personal motivation of farmer). This distinction influenced the coverage by visits in a country and also differences across species. In all visits, private veterinary practitioners play an important role. The added value given by a veterinarian performing these preventive visits enhances food safety, animal health and welfare, public health and the environment. Often visit results are collected in databases, which in most of the cases can be accessed by the government. However, not always. The farmer mostly had to pay for the visits, while sometimes the government or a retailer intervened. Overall, respondents were very appreciative of the preventive visits and their aims, but several respondents suggested that improvement of the visits is necessary. This study did not survey farmers’ opinions, which would be recommendable in future research. This survey also only focused on livestock, while preventive visits are required for all professional animal establishments, according the Animal Health Law. Therefore, a future study for other establishments e.g. dog breeders would be useful.