El Presidente de la WRSA, Thierry Gidenne, solicita que todos los especialistas en cunicultura (investigadores, veterinarios, técnicos, productores, mataderos, etc.) que lo deseen le envíen (thierry.gidenne@inra.fr) su contacto (indicando correo electrónico, y profesión) para participar a principios de 2019 en una encuesta sobre bienestar y salud en conejos de granja. La encuesta servirá para que Denise Candiani, experta de la EFSA, tenga información útil para elaborar un documento de opinión científica de la EFSA sobre la materia. Denise Candiani es miembro del grupo de expertos nombrado la EFSA para tal menester y el Presidente de la WRSA le trasladará los contactos de los interesados en recibir y realizar la encuesta (véase carta debajo).
======== letter from Denise CANDIANI ‘EFSA officer”=================
Dear WRSA officer
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has recently started a project on the welfare of farmed rabbits. It follows a mandate received by the European Parliament.
In particular, in January 2017 the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development raised the issue of welfare of farmed rabbits and a “Motion for a European parliament resolution on minimum standards for the protection of farm rabbits” was developed (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A8-2017-0011&format=XML&language=EN).
The EU Parliament therefore requested EFSA to deliver a scientific opinion on health and welfare of rabbit farmed in different production systems. This will include all aspects related to housing, rearing and nutrition and the effects thereof on rabbit health, welfare and behaviour.
In order to develop the opinion, EFSA set up a working group of European experts and I was called as expert to collaborate with this working group.
EFSA has extracted information from published literature but would like to complement such information by knowledge of experts in the field. For this reason, it will develop a survey – addressed to rabbit specialists – about i) the severity of certain welfare problems for farmed rabbit (e.g. thermal discomfort, metabolic disorders etc) and ii) the prevalence of such welfare problems in different production systems.
In order to capture all variability of rabbit production scenarios, the survey will be sent to specialists from various backgrounds such as researchers, veterinarians, farmers, system producers/industry.
I am kindly asking if you could send me the list of members of WRSA from your national branch in order to send them the survey and collect their views about the above mentioned aspects of rabbit production. If possible, it would be good to have some few information about the specialist background (i.e. researcher – farmer – veterinarians – industry).
