The EURL for Rabies is glad to announce that the next Workshop will held the 10 and 11 June 2025 in Maison-Alfort, France, a municipality in the suburbs of Paris. Please take note that this Workshop dedicated to NRL will be held on site only. The meeting place will be located at ANSES headquarters. Save the Date in your agendas!  

On 17 September the four EURCAWs hosted an online meeting with National Reference Centres (NRCs) for Animal Welfare and the Supporting Bodies (SBs) of Competent Authorities. Over 50 people attended the meeting, with representation from across EU Member States. The meeting started with presentations from the EURCAWs, including an introduction to EURCAW Aqua (designated in January 2024), two NRCs and one SB. As the aim of the meeting is to explore ways to collaborate, workshops and interactive sessions were also used.   The first workshop session considered a theme relevant to all EURCAWs: “Approval and assessment of stunning equipment” and was presented by Dr Virginie Michel. ​The aim of the workshop was to have a better understanding about the needs of MSs and the type of work that the EURCAWs can provide on this topic.​ Council Regulation No. 1099/2009 states that “Products marketed or advertised as restraining or stunning equipment shall only be sold when accompanied by appropriate instructions concerning their use in a manner which ensures optimal conditions for the welfare of animals. Those instructions shall also be made publicly available by the manufacturers via the Internet”.​ However, some Member States have raised issues about new equipment being installed, for which proof of efficiency has not been made available. Polling tools were used to request feedback from NRCs and SBs and inform the workshop discussion.   After a short break, attendees were divided into EURCAW- specific workshops. The themes were: Managing larger litter sizes (EURCAW Pigs)​ Good practices (farm/transport/slaughter) (EURCAW Poultry-SFA)​ Emergency killing (EURCAW Ruminants & Equines)   The meeting finished with a wrap-up session including a summary of key points from the EURCAW-specific workshops. The meeting short report is availalble here. 

The Centre is celebrating the publication of its sixth scientific article as a result of the work carried out in Activity 2 in 2023.  A review of the technical and scientific literature on existing methods for assessing walking ability in broilers was conducted, and the reliability, validity and feasibility of the different methods were assessed when relevant information was available. This review named " Overview of the various methods used to assess walking ability in broiler chickens" has been published in Veterinary Record and is available here.

CIR 2024/2052 amending Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/808

Organized by EURCAW-Poultry-SFA. The webinar was held via Teams. Target audience: Official inspectors from the Competent Authorities of the EU MSs Attendance through invitation only.     The PDF of the presentation is available here. The webinar recording is available here.    Description: Directive 98/58/EC concerning the protection of animals kept for farming purposes requires that Member States ensure that animals are kept under conditions respecting their physiological and ethological needs. Several indicators could be used to assess the welfare of turkeys on farms and will be presented during this webinar. The aim of the webinar is to review the most valid and feasible indicators and their methods of assessment, with a focus on Animal Based Indicators.    The webinar was attended by 138 people (189 registered), from 17 EU Member States: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia,  Malta, The Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden.   Schedule: 10:00-10:15: Introduction and presentation of the Center – L.Vinco 10:15-11:00: Presentation of the assessment of welfare in turkeys on-farm using the most relevant indicators and their methods – F. Mocz, L.Vinco. 11:00-12:00: Questions/Discussion with the audience   This webinar has been organized within the sub-activity 4.2: Develop course material for specific topics, of the working program 2023-2024.

Monitoring Rabies in Media dashboard has been developed by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) to monitor open source Media for news articles related to rabies. It presents the spatiotemporal distribution of news articles published worldwide, it classifies the articles by source and target country,  it detects alerts when the number of publications is increasing unexpectedly and it provides access to the webpages of the original articles. The users can detect trends and may identify potential threats which should be interpreted in the context of the epidemiological situation. The link to access the tool: :  https://www.timanalytics.eu/TimNewsPublic/dashboard/index.jsp#/space/s_56                                                                                                                                                                                                            

The 15th edition of the Workshop for Rabies took place in Vienna, Austria, on 5 and 6 June 2024. This year, the event was organized in hybrid format with 48 physical and 28 online attendances. It was with pleasure that everyone gathered to meet and discuss the latest news about rabies in Europe and future projects. We thank AGES for co-organizing and hosting this event and all the participants, who brought this Workshop to life through their various presentations. The presentations given during the workshop have been uploaded into the EURL website (accessible only to network members). Finally, the EURL team would like to sincerely thank all the participants and all the people who contributed in one way or another to the organization of this wonderful event.                                                                                                            

The first in-person meeting of the four EU Reference Centres for Animal Welfare (EURCAW Pigs, Poultry and other small farmed animals, Ruminants & Equines, and Aqua) was held on 6 & 7 June in Thessaloniki, Greece. With approx. 40 participants the meeting started with a series of interesting ice-breakers, followed by interactive sessions to exchange ideas about communications and training, quality assurance and scientific outputs. On the second day, members of each Centre were asked to present three minute pitches on ‘What are you proud of – a great way to share experiences! A World Cafe format was then used to discuss seven themes for the new three year work programme (2025-2027). The four EURCAWs have agreed to collaborate on new cross-Centre activities, focusing on a number of exciting initiatives – more to come! Photo: 4 EURCAWs meeting Thessaloniki (©EURCAWs)

The Centre is proud of presenting you its latest infographic issued from a Q2E answer, realized in collaboration with La Chaire bien-être animal: for manual handling and carrying turkeys. A graphic tool for operators in the field for improved turkey welfare !  The document is available here.   

Please save the dates! Two workshops are organized this year on Equine arteritis virus and Glanders/Melioïdosis. The workshops will be held at the International Center of Deauville – Congress Center, 1 av. Lucien Barrière – 14800 DEAUVILLE  (Normandy, France) as follows: -          Monday September 30 , 2024: Equine Arteritis -          Friday October 4, 2024: Glanders – Melioïdosis This year the 2 workshops are organized in conjunction with the International Equine Infectious Diseases Conference (IEIDC 2024) The hybrid mode in-person / virtual attendance will be offered.  Please register via the following link before June 30 if you want to attend the meeting: https://survey.anses.fr/v4/s/rn8ufm We look forward to seeing all. The EURL Team