The European Reference Center for the welfare of poultry and other small animals will be in operation in January 2020.
The center has been established to help improve the enforcement of the European Union (EU) legislation applicable to these animals during their rearing, transport and slaughter phases. Additionally, the center will contribute to the dissemination of good practices, as well as carrying out scientific studies, training courses and spreading research and information on technical innovations.
Science
The EU’s reference centers aim to not only improve the enforcement of legislation on animal welfare, but also to carry out research and share their findings.
Decisions on welfare are often driven by emotion. It is hoped that the centers can help to bring facts to decision-making processes. “Animal welfare is not always easy to evaluate; we will bring scientific experience when doing so," said Antonio Velarde, animal welfare program head with Spain’s Agrifood Research and Technology Institute (IRTA).
The poultry reference center will develop indicators for evaluating welfare, research, and the preparation of materials to train official veterinarians and other staff from EU bodies along with experts from non-EU countries. Web-based resources that can be consulted by the EU Member States will also be produced.
Multi-center approach
The center is operating across four research bodies in four EU Member States.
In Italy, the Lombardy and Emilia Romagna Experimental Zootechnic Institute has responsibility for broiler welfare, while France’s National Agency of Sanitary Security of the Food Supply (ANSES) is in charge of laying hens welfare. The members of the consortium will be reviewed every 5 years.
The EU adopted its first animal welfare legislation back in 1974, covering the protection of animals in slaughterhouses. Perhaps one of the more controversial and problematic pieces of welfare legislation in recent years has been the ban on conventional cages for laying hens and the problems that this has caused, and continues to cause, for egg producers, many of whom are now transitioning out of cages altogether.
The member institutions of the new reference center were announced in October 2019 and its establishment follows in the footsteps of the designation of the European Union Reference Center for Pigs in March 2018.