SAFO News, October 2004

Dear Subscriber of SAFO News,

Workshop in Falenty, Poland, 16-18 September 2004

The title of the 3^rd SAFO workshop held in Poland was ‘Enhancing animal health and food safety in organic livestock production systems’. Five plenary sessions took place: ‘Zoonotic diseases in Organic Agriculture’, ‘Bio-security as health security on organic farms’, ‘Development of organic livestock farming in Poland and other new members states’, ‘Overview of the organic livestock farming in new member states and candidate countries’, and ‘Risk of residues in organic livestock production’. Power-point presentations from most of the contributions will be available on the website. In total, 97 participants were registered, and all plenary sessions were simultaneously translated. Beside that, a number of work group discussions took place, among others about zoonotic diseases, bio-security and residues. Reports from all work group sessions will appear in the proceedings from the workshop. A farm visit was made to the Sanniki community, where we saw an organic farm with a dairy herd, ducks, hens and a horse, and vegetable production. This gave good background for discussions and understanding of the development of organic farming in Poland and the member states, as well as in organic farming in general. The abstract collection from the workshop is available on the web-site.

Future research collaboration suggested and possibilities will be further explored

During the workshop, research ideas were discussed among partners and suggestions were made an informal way in preparation for the Sunday meeting on research collaboration possibilities. Five major areas for future research collaboration within the group of SAFO-partners and workshop participants developed. These areas were 1) Health planning in organic herds, 2) Milk quality, 3) Grassland farming, 4) Health, production and milk quality in organic sheep and goat production, and 5) Possibilities for creating a Centre of Excellence or other networks for research and development of organic livestock farming. On the website, more information and a contact person for each of these areas will appear in the near future.

Standard development work

One session was based on short reports in relation to each country’s implementation of the Standards. All partners presented information about the development of organic farming in their countries, as well as the main areas of concern within the standards. All the information will be further presented and analysed in the next Standard Development report. All partners have opportunity to collect information these days from their country about the implementation of the European Standards on animal production, including which constraints are making the implementation difficult.

Next workshop in Frick, Switzerland, 17-19 March 2005

The call for the next workshop is available now. The title is: ‘Systems development: quality and safety of organic food’. The planning of the workshop programme will take place based on submitted abstracts suggestions for contributions at our next Steering Committee meeting in Reading in December 2004. Please feel free to submit an abstract or suggest relevant speakers or poster presentations before the end of November. Further details about the workshop and relevant contact addresses are available at the website.

Road-shows in new member states next year

One of the activities in the SAFO project is to arrange 5 so-called road-shows in collaboration with partners in emerging or new EU member states. The five countries will be Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, and the roadshows will be held between March and September next year. Some of the main elements of the Roadshow programmes will be an overview given by SAFO Steering Committee members or other SAFO partners, describing the situation and practical problems facing organic livestock production in other European countries. The local partner and other from the country (e.g. stakeholders, farmers, advisors) will be asked to give a state of the art of organic livestock production within the country. The programs will be designed in early December individually with each of the local partners involved in the road shows.