Document type: DG SANTE audit report 2022-7549 of the European Commission European Commission
Author: DG SANTE
Preview: This report describes the outcome of an audit of Croatia, carried out on-the-spot from 4 to 5 October and remotely from 2 to 4 May and from 13 to 14 October 2022 as part of the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety work programme.
The objective of the audit was to evaluate the suitability and effectiveness of the measures in place to prevent injury or undue suffering to animals (cattle, sheep and goats) during transport by livestock vessel to non-EU countries.
The audit concluded that the system in place to control the protection of animals transported by sea from Croatia to non-EU countries has some weaknesses which reduce its effectiveness to minimise the risk of injury or undue suffering of animals during sea transport.
The livestock facilities at the port and the coordination of the arrival of road vehicles transporting animals allow the adequate protection, handling and inspection of the animals.
The required pre-loading and loading inspections of the vessels and the required checks on fitness of the animals to continue their journey are supplemented by the post-loading inspection of each vessel before departure providing additional guarantees of the verification of the protection of the loaded animals.
The absence of documented procedures for the authorisation of sea transporters - in particular the suitability of contingency plans to see to the animals' needs during emergencies at sea - leads to inconsistent and ineffective assessment of the applications and to the approval of transporters which do not fulfil all the requirements.
The officials do not identify all relevant deficiencies during the pre-loading inspection of vessels. The persistence of some of those deficiencies create a risk for the welfare of the animals during the sea journey.
The records of the official controls do not always include all the identified deficiencies, nor the verbal enforcement issued to operators. The corrective actions accepted by officials often focus on rectification, but do not prevent further recurrence. All this makes it difficult for the authorities to follow up properly on shortcomings they detected previously and makes the system inefficient to prevent the recurrence of the problems.
The authorities do not always communicate to their counterparts the deficiencies they find on vessels approved by other Member States. This does not help to improve the approval system of those Member States and favours the persistence of inadequate livestock vessels calling for business at EU ports.
The existing procedures and records provide limited assurances that officials check and enforce the rules when there is a delay unloading the animals from the trucks and during their handling through all the areas of the exit point. This can have an important negative impact on the animals' welfare between their arrival at the port and their loading onto the vessel due to the characteristics of the port's facilities.
The report contains three recommendations to the competent authorities aimed at improving the effectiveness of the official system to protect the welfare of the animals during sea transport.
