The IZSAM in Russia

On the 13^th and the 14^th of May 2014, the second meeting of the Steering Group of the Platform on animal welfare for Europe was held at the OIE Regional Representation headquarters in Moscow.

The creation of the OIE Platform on animal welfare and of the Steering Group are the result of several events, which have been organized within the framework of OIE initiatives aiming to promote a common approach of the OIE European Region member countries (which were about 53 in 2013) to animal welfare.

The First meeting of the Steering Group of the OIE Platform on animal welfare for Europe was held in Paris at the OIE Headquarters on the 19^th and the 20^th of December 2013. The meeting was concluded with the validation of the triennial Action Plan (2014-2016) for the OIE Regional Platform on animal welfare. The objective of the Plan is to define activities that can directly contribute to the work of Veterinary Services and empower them to take further actions to implement the OIE standards on animal welfare. The Steering Group is composed of OIE delegates coming from 3 non-European countries and 2 European countries, 1 representative of the European Commission, regional and sub-regional representatives of the OIE European Region and representatives of the OIE Collaborating Centre for animal health in Europe.

The objective of the second meeting was to set-up the state of progress of all the activities indicated in the Action Plan (2014-2016), focusing particularly on those ones, which are considered a priority regarding the management of the stray dog population, the transport and slaughter of livestock animals.

As an OIE Collaborating Centre for animal health in Europe, the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise “G. Caporale” (IZSAM) is part of the Steering Group. The experts of IZSAM are giving their scientific support for the implementation of a questionnaire addressed to the Balkan countries with the aim of preparing a solid basis for the next OIE Workshop, which will focus on the management and control of stray dog populations. In particular, the questionnaire will serve as a self-evaluation instrument to determine the starting situation and to monitor over the time, the degree of implementation of the OIE standards, which are described in Chapter 7.7 of the Terrestrial Code, in the Balkan countries.