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SAFO News, February 2006
Dear subscribers to the SAFO Newsletter, SAFO meeting in BrusselsOn 20th January, we from the SAFO project invited EU representatives and stakeholder organisations to participate in a meeting in Brussels, where we presented some of our main conclusions from the project. The agenda for the meeting, as well as the presentations and reports can be found at this webpage. At the meeting, David Younie gave a summary of the 5 road shows, which had been held in Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia in combination with Czech Republic. The EU regulation has been implemented in these countries in less than two years, and the organic sector is relatively new and immature and faces the challenge of a small home market, but never the less a rapid growth in the number of producers. A number of certification non-compliance areas has been identified and possible solutions discussed at the road show meetings; e.g. housing condition as one of the main areas, where many countries have old livestock systems based on tied housing, old buildings or in some regions peri-urban farming. Five of the SAFO project participants, who were also among the national responsible persons for the conduct of the road shows all added feedback from their countries to this presentation. They concluded that the organic sectors in their countries have benefited from these discussions in order to obtain a better idea of the EU regulation and status in other EU countries regarding organic farming. In the SAFO network, the road shows gave us an important and valuable impression of the conditions in new EU countries, which added to the mapping of the huge diversity between EU member states. Albert Sundrum presented some of the main conclusions and recommendations from the Standard Development group, emphasising that a principle of animal health should be included in the EU regulation, and that an animal health and welfare plan should be mandatory for all organic livestock farms in EU. A part of the certification should be based on animal based indicators in order to ensure the beneficial outcome for the animals of the organic production system. In order to meet the huge diversity between countries regarding climatic and other regional specific conditions, a number of rules should be discussed, further specified and illustrated by examples in order to make the EU regulation suitable under all conditions. Mette Vaarst presented some of the overall key messages from the SAFO project. There is still a gap between organic principles, regulations and farm practices, which call for further action, research and exchange of knowledge and experience. The four workshops had with its 81 oral and 39 poster presentations, which are all published and available, contributed significantly to the common knowledge base and a mutual understanding of the challenges regarding animal health, welfare and food safety in organic farming in Europe. The diversity between countries had been vividly illustrated through farm visits and focus on the host countries organic sector. Three SAFO participant consultations had further added details to the needs for understanding the diversity as well as the common characteristics of organic farming. New regulation on organic productionWhilst being in Brussels we learned more about the proposal for a new regulation on organic production of the Commission that was published before Christmas 2005. According to the commission, the new rules will be more flexible e.g. with regard to take regional differences in climate and conditions into account. This is actually in very good accordance with what we have concluded in our recommendations for the standards in the SAFO project. The process of discussion of the proposal has begun and several organic organisations have commented already on the draft. Another EU project, Organic Revision wrote discussion papers on the amendment of the organic principles in the EU regulation and a proposal for improved structure for the EU regulation. If you are interested in more details on this, you can find it at the Organic Revision web site. Joint Organic Congress
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