News

Irish political party Fianna Fail supported the continuation of efforts to achieve internal convergence of direct payments during the transition period, which should be set for the transition from the old to the new rules of the Common Agricultural Policy. All direct payments in Ireland are now at least 60% of the average, the European Commission proposes to continue to achieve internal convergence up to 75% of the average in the Member States by 2020 for the new CAP after 2020. However, the new CAP rules will come into force later as was expected - probably one or two years later. This could also delay efforts to achieve internal convergence of direct payments within Member States, which Ireland would like to avoid through a clause that will allow internal convergence during the transitional period.
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The new Spanish government was confirmed on 07/01/2020, the Minister of Agriculture remains Luis Planas, but there will be other changes in the government. A new government program was also presented that day - under the new program, Spain will pursue a sufficient budget in agricultural policy to ensure the economic, social and environmental sustainability of Spanish farms and forests; the role of women in agriculture and their contribution to strengthening environmental protection should be strengthened - women in agriculture, leading role of SMEs, attention should be focused on a sustainable forestry policy that will help to develop employment in rural areas and to protect biodiversity.
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Rules to ensure greater consumer protection under the New EU Consumer Agreement entered into force on 07/01/2020. Mrs Věra Jourová, Vice-President of the European Commission, stressed the deserved increase in consumer protection in the digital environment, saying that the EU itself refused to sell products sold under the same brand but with different composition in different Member States. She stressed above all the necessity of speedy introduction of new rules by the Member States. Violation of EU consumer rules on a large scale will be penalized with a fine of at least 4% of annual turnover. Member States have two years to implement the Directive in their legal systems.
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Up to 6 outbreaks of highly infectious H5N8 avian influenza have been reported in the Polish Wielkopolskie region. 65,000 chickens were affected in the region, and 50,000 chickens in the neighbouring region. Wielkopolskie region supplies up to 40% of the country's egg production. In Bulgaria, which is one of the countries most affected by African swine fever, veterinary authorities have reported new outbreaks of the disease in the north of the country, with the result that another 24,000 pigs must be killed. In the last six months, around 130,000 pigs have been killed in Bulgaria.
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The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued a report concluding a large-scale study on the welfare of rabbits kept for meat production in the EU. In 2018, the Chairpersons of the EP Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development asked EFSA to draw up two scientific opinions on welfare related to stunning and slaughter of rabbits and conditions related to slaughter for reasons other than meat production (e.g. disease control) and EP Environment Committee. The conclusions of the study point to worse welfare of rabbits in traditional cage systems compared to other systems, with organic systems being the most favourable according to EFSA. The report compared 6 different rabbit breeding methods and suggested improvements in all systems examined. Rabbits are the second largest species in the EU in terms of numbers; most rabbits are concentrated in FR, HU, IT, PT and ES. The conclusions of the report contain concrete recommendations to improve animal welfare and stress the need to collect data on the welfare of farmed rabbits across the EU that have been found to be wrong.
More information is available here.