Amendment to the Animal Disease Act approved by the Federal Cabinet

Farmers' Association criticizes the expansion of the term "animal disease"

The German Farmers' Association (DBV) welcomed the amendment of the Animal Disease Act approved by the Federal Cabinet in principle. Improved federal and state authorizations can enable highly contagious animal diseases to be combated more efficiently.

However, the DBV takes a critical view of the excessive expansion of the definition of the term animal diseases. According to the amendment, pathogens and diseases are also defined as animal diseases that can occur in animals but can also be transmitted to humans in other ways, so-called zoonoses. Without trivializing the spread of zoonoses such as salmonella and the risk to consumers or restricting their effective control, the DBV points out that many zoonoses are not only restricted to animal populations, but can also be spread via the processing industry or the household, for example . Salmonella can spread not only through animal husbandry, but also through food production. It would therefore be ignoring the causes if, when salmonella occurs, as the amendment provides, all measures to combat an animal disease were taken, for example the livestock of a farm from which the food comes was killed.

The DBV, on the other hand, welcomes the clarification in the amendment that the disinfection costs will also be reimbursed, especially with regard to the financial support from the EU for some animal diseases. Accelerating the payment of this compensation, which is necessary in many cases, would be achieved if there were a uniform assessment basis for reimbursement for disinfection. The compensation, according to the DBV's proposal, could relate to the animal or the animal place, for example.

Source: Berlin [dbv]