POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN ANIMAL WELFARE
EAST CENTRAL/EAST AND SOUTH EUROPE ISAE REGIONAL MEETING 2025, Sofija, Bulgaristan, 24 - 26 Haziran 2025, ss.10, (Özet Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
- Basıldığı Şehir: Sofija
- Basıldığı Ülke: Bulgaristan
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.10
- Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Adresli: Hayır
Özet
This contribution aims at providing an overview of the current state of art of the level of implementation of measures to guarantee animal welfare in European policy. LEGISLATION: At first a critical analysis of the legislative acts for the protection of animal welfare in different contexts in Europe will be done with specific examples of gaps and inconsistencies. The level of penetration of animal-based measures to assess welfare in these legislative acts will be detailed for some species and animal categories. ANIMAL WELFARE ASSESSMENT: An overview of the animal welfare schemes will be provided and particular attention will be put on the animal-based measures, both positive and negative, that are highly relevant to the public opinion but are not easy to collect directly at farm level and are even more difficult to check for compliance with the current legislation by the legislator. Examples are mutilations such as surgical castration, tail docking and tail clipping in pigs, mulesing in lambs, disbudding in calves, dehorning in cattle. Integration of these animal-based measures in welfare assessment schemes is mainly based on decision trees assessed via questionnaires to the farmers (e.g. Welfare Quality). SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS: this contribution will analyse another very relevant concern raised by the public opinion, the early cow-calf separation and the quality of the alternative cow-calf contact practices. This latter welfare concern is not legislated yet, despite being part of the mandate from the European Parliament to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and is, thus included in the recent EFSA opinion on welfare of calves. Some of the many research questions to be answered in this context will be listed and the need for validated best welfare friendly practices to be transferred and translated to the policymakers will be pointed out. The integration of positive animal welfare indicators into the on-going assessment schemes to support progress initiatives answering to the societal expectations and policy decisions will be considered as a possible way improve animal welfare, in marginal European regions in particular. Finally, this contribution will overlook the newest policy proposals on pet welfare and the need to elicit the public opinion attention towards other practices harming animal welfare.