75th General Session of the OIE International Committee

Paris, 20-25 May 2007

by David King, IFAP Secretary General

 

Mr Chairman, Director General, members and experts,

 

Thank you for inviting the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) to address the 75th General Session of the OIE. IFAP represents farmers at the world level.

Animal health issues are priorities under IFAP’s Strategic Plan for 2006-2010, because maintaining consumer confidence in livestock products is essential. This includes: food safety and traceability, animal welfare, and animal disease monitoring and control. These are the areas of expertise of the OIE. We therefore value highly our cooperation with your organisation.

 

IFAP was represented by Per Olsen as an observer at the 5th Meeting of the OIE Working Group on Animal Welfare in Paris in July 2006. IFAP was represented by Klaas Johan Osinga at a conference co-hosted by OIE on “Vaccination: a tool for the control of avian influenza” in Italy in March 2007, and I had the pleasure to address your 74th General Session last year.

 

IFAP appreciates the recent invitation of the OIE Director General to the industry groups to share one full membership of the Permanent Animal Welfare Working Group with effect from this General Session. This seat will be rotated annually among the three organisations IDF, IMS and IFAP.  However, farmers are still hoping to get their own space on this working group sometime in the future. Since IDF is the first to occupy this seat, IFAP will continue to participate as an observer at the Group’s meeting in Paris in September 2007. IFAP will also participate in the 2nd OIE Global Conference on Animal Welfare that will take place in Cairo in October 2008.

Thus you can see that IFAP is committed to this relationship with the OIE.

We learned that in 2008 OIE will discuss, as a ‘technical item’, the theme: “Integrating small farmers into animal welfare systems”. Obviously, this is of interest to IFAP since farmers are involved. We ask that farmers be represented on the organising committee to develop this theme. Farmers would stress the need to secure the animal health status of small hobby farms, and in developing countries, where most of the farmers are small-scale, we would address the problems for all farmers arising from the lack of adequate animal health infrastructure.

This year, IFAP is drawing up a policy statement on Animal Welfare. Many farmers’ organisations have been involved in the development of animal welfare codes of practise and legislation in their country, and these experiences are being brought together within IFAP. We will of course share them with the OIE.

National animal welfare strategies need to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each of the interested parties: individual animal owners and users, livestock animal industry groups, community animal welfare groups and governments. After a national strategy is adopted, it would be followed by the development of a national implementation plan in consultation with key stakeholders, especially farmers.

Effective communications are critical for success. This means dialogue between farmers, consumers, responsible animal welfare groups and government. It also means awareness-raising and training across the whole community to promote an improved understanding of animal welfare

Another of IFAP’s priorities for this year is to finalize a policy statement on Food Safety and Quality.  The statement first draws a distinction between food safety and food quality issues.

 

Food safety is characterised by the fitness for consumption of food products, and protection of consumers against food-borne health risks. At the primary producer level, these risks are: zoonoses, and microbiological, chemical and physical contamination. Market competition should be based on food quality and not on food safety.

IFAP, like OIE, is promoting an integrated approach to food safety questions from the “farm to the fork”.  There are food safety concerns at all levels: on farms, in slaughterhouses, in food and feed companies, in the storage, distribution and retail sectors, as well as in the kitchen. Actions need to be taken at all these stages in the agri-food chain. Farmers should be responsible for food safety and quality only to the extent that they can control it up to the farm gate.

Producer participation is needed to meet on-farm food safety standards.  IFAP therefore encourages the development of national or sectorial guides to good farming practice. Our organisation is therefore pleased to be collaborating with the OIE on preparation of a joint OIE/FAO publication on “Guidelines to Good Farming Practice”.  In fact, IFAP will be requesting representation of farmers on the OIE Working Group on “Animal Production Food Safety”. More and more of the programs to implement food safety standards on the farm are being run by farmers’ organisations, so they should be involved in this work of the OIE. We hope that you will consider this request favourably.

IFAP is also elaborating a work program in this area with the Food Safety Division of the World Health Organisation. We need to ensure complementarity between the work we do on food safety work at farm level with OIE and WHO.

To conclude, Mr. Chairman, I want to again express our appreciation for OIE’s commitment to stakeholder consultations, especially with the farmers’ organisations. This should be happening also at the national level, and in many cases it is. However IFAP would like to propose that OIE member governments formalize a process of communicating with the farmers’ organisations in their country on the work of the OIE. Farmers play a key role in the control and prevention of animal diseases, and they need to know about OIE activities. What sort of things would you discuss with your farmers’ organisations?  I will give three examples:

• The adoption by the OIE of a new BSE-risk classification (negligible, controlled and undetermined)
• The obligation to report detection of certain animal diseases in wildlife
• The development of the concept of compartmentalization is something farmers need to be aware of.

These are just some examples. At the international level, IFAP could work with OIE to draw up a short bulletin giving a number of key messages directed at farmers.

We realise that in developing countries, this kind of farmer/government dialogue will be very difficult. Farmers’ organisations and veterinary services in developing countries often lack the capacity to meet food safety and animal health and welfare standards. This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

OIE Director General Vallat mentioned this in his report of activities for 2006, and again in a recent editorial in the OIE bulletin. He pointed out that the OIE World Animal Health and Welfare Fund provides a means to respond to this challenge through strengthening the capacities of developing countries in terms of governance of animal health systems. From a farmer’s point of view this capacity building is critical.  But as a last thought, we would like you to consider including farmers’ organisations in capacity-building programs so that they can be effective partners with government in the management of animal health systems.

Thank you for your attention.