Development of the EFSA Guidance on Risk Assessment for Animal Welfare-UFAW

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) provides independent scientific assessments on risks associated with food and feed, plant health, environment, animal health, and animal welfare by using, whenever possible, a Risk Assessment (RA) approach. EFSA‟s tasks also include the promotion of the development of uniform RA methodologies in the above-mentioned fields. Since 2003, the Animal Health and Welfare (AHAW) Panel of EFSA adopted, 32 scientific opinions on Animal Welfare (AW) dealing with breeding and fattening pigs, laboratory animals, animal transport, fish welfare, stunning and killing of animals including fish, calves and dairy cows welfare and stunning and killing of seals. Several RA approaches have been followed in these scientific opinions. In December 2005, the EFSA Scientific Colloquium “Principles of Risk Assessment of Food Producing Animals” concluded that, although different guidelines for RA related to food microbiological (Codex) and animal health issues (OIE) are available, no specific standardized RA methodology exists in the field of AW. The need to set up and harmonise such a methodology was therefore evidenced. A self mandate was launched in September 2007 (EFSA-Q-2007-168) to develop guidelines and working procedures for AW RA. The guidelines will be specially focused on four main AW issues: housing, management, transport, stunning and killing. For each AW issue, the species and animal categories will be firstly identified together with all possible scenarios (e.g. transport of pigs during long journeys: different temperatures, humidity conditions, air speeds and qualities, resting periods, feeding and watering schedules, animal densities). Afterward, for each scenario, risk factors (hazards) and consequences (adverse effects) will be identified. The methodology applied in the previous EFSA Opinions on AW should be considered as a first approach. The scope of the Guidance is to provide a harmonised and broad methodology for RA applied to the field of AW. It is aimed to give the scientists of the various working groups the modelling instruments to apply RA methodology to the different AW scenarios. The release of the EFSA Guidance is expected for 2011.