The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published new guidelines on the risk assessment of animal welfare. The EFSA said this was the first time such a risk assessment strategy has been developed.

The animal welfare guidelines follow an announcement by the EU that it will pursue a new four year strategy to improve animal welfare in the block by way of a new all-encompassing regulation system, which would focus on educating people working with animals and on the health and wellbeing of the animals themselves.

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The new methodology, announced by the EFSA last week, follows a step-by-step approach,  designed to be applicable to all animal species and all factors that affect animal welfare, according to the food safety body. These areas include housing, transport, stunning and killing. The EFSA assured that the new guidelines had been developed in a scientific manner and will support the new Animal Welfare Strategy 2012-2015.

The guidelines will be applied by EFSA’s Panel on Animal Health and Welfare (AHAW) to its future advice. Philippe Vannier, Chair of EFSA’s AHAW Panel, commented: "These keenly anticipated guidelines will form an important part of the body of scientific literature on animal welfare. For the first time, scientists, veterinarians and all those with an interest in animal welfare are able to follow a practical, harmonised methodology to assess risks associated with welfare of farm animals."

Risk assessment follows three steps

The new EFSA framework bases its assessment on three key steps: exposure assessment, in which the level and duration of exposure to factors are defined; consequence characterisation, which describes what effect exposure to factors will have on welfare; and risk characterisation, which outlines the likelihood of occurrence and magnitude of adverse welfare effects.

The health body said its new guidelines would provide useful, universally applicable guidelines to help scientists, veterinarians and farmers to develop effective welfare controls and monitoring plans at farm level. The EFSA said it would continue to develop the welfare risk assessment guidelines based on feedback on the current framework.

The EFSA also intends to present its findings on animal welfare risk assessment at the next international conference in Brussels on the forthcoming animal welfare strategy. The meeting will take place between 29th February and 1st March.

The strategy as it currently stands has been criticised by farming and animal welfare groups for the inequitable way in which it proposes to implement changes; farmers’ group Copa Cogea said the new welfare guidelines offered no scope for distributing the higher costs associated with welfare improvements throughout the supply chain, leaving the onus on farmers.   

Eurogroup for animals also reacted strongly to the new welfare policy, stating it showed a lacklustre commitment to animal welfare improvements. The welfare group said in a statement, “This strategy lacks any ambition and is a missed opportunity to highlight the role the EU can play in translating citizens concerns into action. Research clearly shows that European citizens care deeply about animals and expect governments to take responsibility and improve animal welfare. This strategy completely ignores this and the positive impact good animal welfare has on animal health, food safety and quality and sustainability.”

Both organisations accused the European Commission of bending to the weight of big business, resulting in watered down and unevenly distributed regulation.

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