SAFO News, April 2005

Proceedings from 3rd SAFO workshop available as paper copies

The proceedings from 3rd workshop have been slightly delayed, primarily due to delay of some of the contributions (one was still not submitted before the extended deadline, which means that this paper is unfortunately not included in the proceedings), and relatively long time in print. Nevertheless, they have been available on the website since late January, and now the paper versions are available and can be obtained from DARCOF in Denmark

The 4th SAFO workshop has been held in Frick, Switzerland

The 4th SAFO workshop was held 17th-19th March in Frick, Switzerland. It contained the plenary sessions ‘Quality and safety of organic livestock products: Perspectives of different stakeholders’, ‘Researching the quality aspects of organic livestock products’, ‘Veterinary medicinal inputs: impact on quality and food safety’, ‘Researching food safety aspects of organic livestock productions and products’, and ‘Visions for safety and quality of animal products: delivering the promises of organic farming in the future’. Furthermore, three sets of working groups worked with topics related to the workshop issues, standard development and key messages (see below).

Health planning in organic livestock farming: future collaboration reflected on the web-site

One recommendation from the SAFO project both in relation to standard development and of development of organic livestock production in general is to initiate health planning as obligatory for organic herds. One working group at the 4th workshop agreed to follow up on previous attempts to establish collaboration between countries about health planning in organic livestock farming. Therefore, this activity will be a part of the SAFO-website. Different versions of templates for health planning will appear on this website.

The 5th SAFO workshop may take place in Denmark, May-June 2006

According to the technical annex of the project, the 5th SAFO-workshop is planned held in Brussels. This will not be a workshop as the four previous workshops with field trip etc, but is planned to solely address the outcomes and conclusions of the SAFO-project. The success of this workshop highly depends on the participation of stakeholders and policy makers, particularly from main organic organisations and the EU Commission.

At the Soil Association conference in Newcastle (held in collaboration with the Qlif project), a group of people from EU funded projects about organic farming (among others Qlif, CORE-Organic, Organic HACCP, Organic Revision, SAFO and CHANNEL) met and agreed to explore the possibilities to organise and participate as projects in a joint conference in Denmark in May 2006. Each project can have its own separate 1-2 day workshop, and each participating project will have the opportunity to present key messages in the joint conference.

At the SAFO-partner meeting advantages and disadvantages of participating in this conference were discussed. We concluded that it seems relevant for us in the SAFO project to participate in this joint conference, provided the organising committee of this joint organic conference would agree to give the SAFO project much better recognition in the organisation of the scientific sessions of the workshop. In late March we approached the other EU-projects, and based on their responses the SAFO steering committee will decide whether we should apply for extension of the SAFO project in relation to the submission of the second annual report, which will be submitted in late April.

Future possibilities for collaboration and networking are being researched

Future possibilities for collaboration in the area of organic farming have been discussed. The content and procedure of Framework 7 is not yet clear, and in early April this year, the proposal for the FP7 is being discussed in the European Commission. The first call for proposals can be expected in early 2007. Therefore, no obvious possibilities for future project plans or networking seems clear at the moment. In the Steering Committee, we will investigate possibilities for a so-called ‘European Economic Interest Group’ (EEIG) and various possibilities to create network on development of organic and/or sustainable farming in new member countries. Creating a network with strong focus on Food Safety is seen as a relevant possibility. The activities in CORE-Organic may contain some possibilities for research collaboration for SAFO-partners, more in terms of research involving a limited number of partners rather than networking involving all current SAFO-partners.

Process of extracting partners’ experiences from the SAFO-project: what are their key messages?

All SAFO partners have participated in a process of identifying the most valuable outcomes of the SAFO project seen from their point of view. First, each partner was asked to email their three most important key messages to the SAFO-coordinator, who grouped the outcomes and let that form basis for group work discussions at the 4th workshop. The outcomes of these discussions will be condensed into a report in the proceedings from the 4th workshop and will be put on the webpage.

Mette Vaarst, SAFO Coordinator