Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

In 2009 it was revealed that there were some serious shortcomings to the husbandry within pig productions in Sweden. To strengthen the protection of pigs in Sweden the Swedish Board of Agriculture (SBA) decided to implement an ‘Animal Welfare Declaration’ (AWD) regarding pig production. Since 2010 the legislation regarding pharmaceuticals and the use of pharmaceuticals states that veterinarians who prescribe pharmaceuticals to an owner of pigs also has to fill out an AWD before the veterinarian can authorise a pig owner to, without supervision, give pharmaceuticals to their animals. The purpose of an AWD is to confirm that the level of animal protection and health on the pig farm is acceptable before the veterinarian can authorise unsupervised use of pharmaceuticals to treat animals on the farm. The veterinarians are obligated to establish two copies of the AWD, one for them to keep and one for the pig owner to keep. At least once a year the veterinarians are also obligated to send a copy of the latest AWD to the County Administrative Board (CAB). Another purpose of the AWD is that it is supposed to help the CAB prioritize where to aim their limited resources for animal welfare inspections when it comes to pig producers. The goals of this study was to try and verify that this AWD lives up to the goals on which it was built, to strengthen the animal protection for Swedish production pigs.

Results indicate that there are risks that the AWDs are not utilized in an optimal way, which could lead to believe that pigs in Sweden still are at risk to experience bad welfare. The SBA has yet to examine how the AWD is used in practice, even though they claimed they would do so during 2015. SBA has had conversations with the prescribing veterinarians and the CAB in which the veterinarians and the CAB claim they feel like the work regarding the AWD is in lines with the goals. This has led the SBA to the conclusion that no closer examination has been necessary.

My conclusion, on the contrary, leads to that an examination is way overdue. In my experience it is not optimal to implement a new system and then ignore to examine if the regulations are being complied with or not. From the gathered information it is hard to draw any conclusive conclusion, since how will we ever know if these AWD is as good as it seems if no one bothers to inspect the results?