SAFO News, January 2005



Dear subscribers of the SAFO Newsletter,

Open for registration: Next workshop in Frick, Switzerland, 17th-19th March 2005

The program is now available on the SAFO website. As you can see, there will be plenaries with the following titles ‘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’.

Pease note that deadline for registration is the 10th of February 2005.

Standard development work

Based on questionnaires from all the participants in the SAFO-Network, the Standard Development group is working hard on analysing the results, which will be further discussed at the 4th workshop in Frick. More different categories of 'problems' in the implementation process are identified and need to be addressed.

  1. Problems with the interpretation and the understanding of the EU legislation.
  2. Problems connected to the existing farming systems in the countries, which makes it difficult to fulfil the legislation. E.g. access of straw, traditions for farming e,g, use of communal grazing, tethering etc. These problems need to be addressed on national level and in close collaboration with the farmers, and the EU legislation need to consider how to cover solutions under widely different conditions and in different systems.
  3. Problems of understanding the way of thinking in organic farming, e.g. that the use of hormones for estrus synchronization is not in accordance with the organic principles and way of thinking in organic farming. This is a question of understanding the principles and thing through the consistency of the practices and regulations.

Road-shows in new and emerging EU member states during 2005

The five road shows in the SAFO network are planned, except from exact dates and venues. The first one will take place in Latvia in March 2005, and Mette Vaarst will attend this meeting together with David Younie. The Hungarian road show will take place on 9th of June, and David Younie and Albert Sundrum will attend this meeting. Three road shows will take place in late September in Romania, Estonia and Slovakia.

Future networking based on the SAFO project

In the SAFO network, we work on possibilities for future collaboration, both in terms of networking and in terms of research projects involving relevant partners. This will be further discussed during the next SAFO workshop in Frick.

Discussion list

Half a year ago we made three email-discussion lists in order to goal direct the discussions into different areas. We can now see that the use of the discussion lists does not really reflect the original intentions. At the same time, we are very happy that at least one of them is used quite a lot now. So we have decided to put them all together as one, which will include all the participants from all three lists.

All the best wishes for a good, happy and prosperous 2005 to everybody!

Kind regards on behalf of the SAFO Steering Committee,

Mette Vaarst