News

Unsafe beef meat from illegal slaughter, over which there was no veterinary surveillance, has spread to the markets of a total of 13 EU Member States, according to the latest information. EFSA inspectors will from 04/02/2019, at the request of Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitiss, assess the current situation directly in Poland. The priority now is to trace and withdraw from the market all products from the slaughterhouse in the central Polish area of Mazovia. The polish Chief Veterinary Officer Pawel Niemczuk confirmed a total of 9,500 kg of meat from illegally slaughtered cows originating from 2 Polish companies; 2,700 kg were exported to other EU countries. The presence of dangerous meat has been proven in 13 EU Member States (EE, FI, FR, HU, LT, LV, PT, RO, ES, SE, CZ, SK and DE). The Polish authorities informed the Commission about the closure of the slaughterhouse.
More information is available here and here.

Poland, at the end of January 2019, restored imports of pig meat and pig meat products from Lithuania to its market. The import ban had been in force since December 2018, due to fears of the possible spread of African swine fever (ASF) in the EU. At the beginning of January 2019, Poland, due to ASF, decided to shoot 20,000 wild boars to stop the spread of the disease. Stricter measures against the spread of ASF have been also adopted by other Member States.
More information is available here.

The Danish Ministry of Agriculture announced on 28 January 2019 a plan to build a fence along the German border as a preventing means of the migration of wild boars and hence the spread of African swine fever infection. In 2016, Danish pork-industry exports amounted to about DKK 30 billion: DKK 19 billion to other EU countries and DKK 11 billion to countries outside the EU. If an outbreak of African swine fever were to occur, exports to non-EU countries would have to shut down. The fence should be completed in autumn 2019, reaching a length of nearly 70 kilometres. According to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), whose results were also interpreted by Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis, there is no scientific evidence of the effectiveness of this measure, especially in the case of DK and DE, where the spread of the disease has not been recorded yet. Andriukaitis stressed the need for coordinated cooperation between EU Member States to combat the spread of AMP and appreciated the efforts of CZ, SK and BE.
More information is available here.

Elections for the members of the European Parliament will take place in the EU Member States on 23-26/05/2019. A number of current MEPs of the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) have already stated whether they intend to stand for the post of MEPs between 2019 and 2024. The candidacy has been already confirmed by Herbert Dorfmann (IT, EPP), Marco Zullo (IT, EFD) Ms Flanagan (IE, GUE/NGL), Éric Andrieu (FR, S&D), Martin Häusling (DE, Greens), Norbert Lins (DE, EPP), Ulrike Müller, Jan Huitema (NL, ALDE), Norbert Erdos (HU, EPP) and Jarosław Kalinowski (PL, EPP). On the other side, part of the MEPs, including Michel Dantin (FR, EPP), Albert Dess (DE, EPP), Peter Jahr (DE, EPP), Ivan Jakovčič (HR, ALDE) and José Bové (FR, Greens) have already their candidacy rejected. Due to Brexit, also British MEPs will leave COMAGRI: John Stuart Agnew (ENF), Diane Dodds (IN), Richard Ashworth (EPP) and James Nicholson (ECR).

All this regulations are available in the Official Journal of the European Union.