Commissioner Várhelyi at the 77th EAAP Annual Meeting
The 77th Annual Meeting of EAAP held from 7th to 11th September in Hamburg, received a visit from Olivér Várhelyi, European Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare, who met a delegation of participants to outline the main actions the Commission is pursuing within his remit. At the core of his address was the fight against zoonoses, an area where animal health and public health are ever more closely intertwined and which calls for prevention, surveillance and a coordinated response capacity at European level. The Commissioner then turned to the legislative initiatives aimed at improving animal welfare, stressing the need to reconcile higher standards with the competitiveness of European production, in markets where EU farmers compete every day with producers subject to different rules. It was precisely on this balance that EAAP President Joël Bérard intervened, drawing the Commissioner’s attention to the importance of supporting research in animal science. Without sustained investment in scientific knowledge, he observed, the entire sector would be inexorably weakened. It is research, after all, that provides the tools to make the objectives of European policy compatible with one another: livestock farming that is more attentive to animal welfare, more resilient in terms of animal health, and at the same time economically sustainable. Ambitious rules, without the knowledge and innovation needed to implement them, risk translating into nothing more than additional costs for farmers. The meeting confirmed the role of the EAAP Annual Meeting as a forum for dialogue between the scientific community and the European institutions, as well as the Federation’s readiness to place the expertise of its researchers at the service of evidence-based policies, capable of guiding European livestock farming towards higher standards without undermining its viability.