This year, we will update and upgrade the National Information System for Registration, Identification, Tracking and Control of Animal Health Status - VetIS. This was announced by the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Desislava Taneva at a meeting of the Advisory Board on Livestock Breeding. According to her, the financial tools for making this possible are currently being elaborated. MinisterTaneva specified that all inspections establishing drastic differences in the registration and identification of animals lead to uncertainty in the bodies responsible for the subsidising of the sector. She provided an example with an inspection of a livestock farm with 400 animals registered and 314 of them missing. With the resources available to the Ministry, on-the-spot inspections of all farms are simply not possible. These inspections will be carried out on the basis of received alerts and randomly, along with experts from the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency, Minister Taneva said.
From the beginning of 2019 to 31 May, 80,815 large ruminants, 209,099 small ruminants, 40,317 pigs, 1,681 equines and 208,370 honeybee colonies have been identified and registered in the system. Spring inspections of honeybee colonies have also been carried out. The deadline was extended to 31 May 2019 because of bad weather conditions and collected information is currently being summarised.
During today’s meeting, amendments and supplementations to Ordinance No 44 of 2006 on the veterinary requirements for livestock farms were discussed as well as the drafting of a new Law on Veterinary Activities.
The next meeting of the Advisory Board will take place in July. Then, an analysis of the direct payment campaign for 2019 will be provided.
The presentations during today's meeting of the Advisory Board on Livestock Breeding are available at the following links: Implementation of a National Program for Prevention, Supervision, Control and Eradication of Animal Diseases, including Zoonoses in Bulgaria 2019-2021; Commitments for the areas for which we propose a one-year extension of the five-year commitment expiring in 2019; Amendments and supplementations to Ordinance No. 44 of 2006 on the veterinary requirements for livestock farms; Presentation of a support budget for cattle and ruminants with state aid of the de minimis type.