Full title: Contribution to the working group established to prepare for obligatory health visits in the pig industry in 2023-2024 on the subject of animal welfare
Requested by: French Directorate General for Food (DGAL) - French Ministry of Agriculture and Food
Date of request: 14/04/2021
Delivery date: 04/07/2022
Deliverables: Revised documents - no online official documents available
Context
According to the revised Decree of 24 September 2015 putting in place health visits to farms: ‘Obligatory on-farm health visits are instituted for the sectors listed in the annexe, the purpose of which is to raise farmers’ awareness of public veterinary health and of ways to improve their mastery of sanitary hazards on the farm, and to collect data and information concerning veterinary public health.
The data and information collected may concern all or a part of the following topics: the running of farms, premises and equipment, animal protection, the management of health risks to animals and the public, biosecurity, monitoring of the animals’ environment, and the maintaining of health records and documents’.
It should be noted that the collection of data is carried out using questionnaires that are randomly selected and anonymised (6% of planned questionnaires).
The sectors involved in these health visits are the following: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, poultry, bees, equids.
In this context, the FRCAW was asked by the SNGTV, the French National Society of Veterinary Technical Groupings, in response to the DGAL’s call for competitive tenders, to contribute to the preparation of the next round of health visits which will take place in 2023-2024 and will concern the topic of ‘Animal Welfare’. The FRCAW contributed in particular to the creation of the three documents on which the structure of the health visit is based:
1. A questionnaire
2. A pocket guide (explanatory document for the veterinarian)
3. An information sheet for the farmer summarising key information
Main conclusions of the FRCAW
The main suggestions and changes to the above documents proposed by the FRCAW are confidential. It should be noted that the FRCAW made recommendations concerning the content of each document, but that there was no request for it to validate their final content.
