Socio-Economic Aspects of Animal Health and Food Safety in Organic Farming Systems

In early September 2003, the first workshop in the EU-funded network project ‘Sustaining animal health and food safety in Organic Farming’ – SAFO – was held in Florence, Italy. Approximately 70 persons from 19 European countries participated. This workshop focused on socio-economical aspects of organic animal production. Issues connected to these aspects, both on farm level and on society level were discussed.

In the workshop, the opening session focused on economics of animal health at enterprise and farm level. Dr. Alistair W. Stott from Scottish Agricultural College discussed the balance between what is ‘optimal’ seen from animal health, economic and ‘organic’ perspectives, e.g. with regard to choice of treatment policy. Dr. Paul Rye Kledal from the Danish Research Institute of Food Economics gave a thought provoking presentation of organic farming as a social counter movement seen in the context of a changing society during the past decades. He discussed this topic in relation to the changing modes of food consumption (such as ‘eating out/eating home’, convenience food and ‘mobility food’). Dr. Uli Hamm from the University of Kassel discussed the market situation throughout Europe, and Dr. Jürn Sanders from FIBL in Switzerland focused on demographic factors related to the consumption pattern of organic food. Dr. Cath Milne discussed the meeting between consumer perception and production reality, where she saw organic farming more ‘from the outside perspective’. Dr. Gerold Rahmann from Institute of Organic Farming (OEL-FAL) gave perspectives on the keeping of animals and encouraged to think of the very different purposes of keeping animals, also in Europe. Dr. Malla Hovi from VEERU, Reading University, presented the results from a project focusing on the attitudes of organic inspectors in the UK – another group of acteurs in the organic sector. The whole issue of organic standards and who should be the driving force in making them, controlling them and focusing on them, were given by Dr. Willie Lockeretz from Tufts University in Boston, based on experiences from development of standards in US. In summary, a lot of different perspectives,

lining up the area of organic animal food production and considerations related to this both in terms of consumer expectations, standard development and possibilities to act and react on farm, sector and society level were discussed.

Six presentations given by Italian researchers and local organisations were devoted to improve our understanding of organic animal production in this region that we were visiting. This part of the workshop was held on the second day of the workshop in ‘The Old Palace’ of Florence in order to give workshop participants the opportunity to meet stakeholders and local organisations. These presentations as well as a number of papers given on the first day about farm level economics and cases from areas in various parts of Europe (e.g. given by Dr. Pierre Sans from INRA in France, Dr. Georgios Arsenos from Thessaloniki in Greece and Claus Deblitz from FAL in Germany – the last mentioned gave results of a cross-country project from several European countries), gave together a lively picture of the diversity with regard to the conditions for organic animal husbandry.

All full papers can be downloaded from the website from December.

In-between the plenum sessions, working groups were formed and reported their results in plenum. Economic constraints in the organic sector, resource management on farm (dairy, pig, poultry, beef and sheep farms) as well as sector level, and standard development were topics that were discussed in groups. All workshop participants were encouraged to bring posters about the organic food sector in their country, and a number of posters were presented outside the workshop room and discussed during breaks as well as in a one-hour poster session. Papers from this will also be accessible from the website.

One of the backgrounds for the whole SAFO-network are the conclusions from a former EU-funded concerted action network project, which focused on animal health and welfare in the organic animal production: Network for Animal Health and Welfare in Organic Agriculture (NAHWOA) (1999-2001). The NAHWOA concludes that there is, currently, insufficient evidence of improved animal health and welfare and food safety in organic livestock production compared to conventional livestock production. The existing, albeit limited, surveillance suggests that there are areas of organic livestock production where particular effort needs to be made to solve conflicting interests between environmental protection, human health and animal health and welfare. Whilst the end results of such efforts can be defined narrowly within the concept of food safety and animal health/welfare, the technical aspects involved are often wider issues that require a genuinely holistic approach to the whole production system.

The objective of the SAFO network project is to improve food safety and animal health in organic livestock production systems in existing and candidate member countries of the European Union. This will happen through exchange and active communication of research results and conclusions between researchers, policy makers, farmers and the wider stakeholder community, including consumers.

The diversity across Europe with regard to markets and conditions for animal husbandry, form a major challenge for the development of organic food production, and also in the first workshop, this challenge became obvious. One big challenge is to extent this discussion not only to the Western European countries of EU, but also to the emerging member states in Central and Eastern Europe. Many emerging Membership countries have a large livestock production sector that, in many cases, is suitable for conversion to organic production. These countries need to be involved in the further development of the legislation. One part of this network project is standard development, and discussions in this area also pointed to needs for taking the diversity into consideration when implementing the standards into different European countries. The reports from this work will appear on the website in November.

Many challenges do exist in the organic sector to ensure a good animal welfare and a high health status, and safe animal food products from the farm. Some of these challenges are:

• Giving the animals a good life – this is an important part of the process quality of the animal food products
• Ensuring a high health status in herds – which will also help minimising the use of all drugs
• Making the animal production a part of the whole farm, in order to ensure harmony between different production areas of the farm, and to develop the idea of a whole organic farming system, comprising both animals and crop production
• Processing food of high quality and with no artificial or synthetic substances

The consequences of ‘organic way of living’, such as outdoor life, local circulation of feed stuffs and manure, and attempts to later weaning all form challenges, where solutions and compromises must be found in the highly diverse farming sector of Europe today. Further challenges with respect to food production, food quality and food safety exist in relation to organic production, where ‘good raw material’ is wanted, high quality, and natural products with a history.

The SAFO Network works on different levels in order to form a true platform for exchange and building up of knowledge. Workshops are important activities of the project. The next workshop will be held in Witzenhausen in Germany 25th-28th March 2004. In this workshop, focus will be about Systems development: husbandry and quality of animal products from the farm.

Proceedings will appear on the website, and translations into 18 languages will be made. The website www.safonetwork.org provides a platform for global dissemination of the shared knowledge and experiences, and will hopefully form a forum for exchange activities between the workshops. Email discussion forums are being created in order to provide a direct contact between people.

By Mette Vaarst, DVM, ph.d., Department of Animal Health and Welfare, DIAS