On 10 August, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) issued a series of recommendations to improve the welfare of farmed pigs.
For example, the EFSA has published the first of a series of opinions on animal welfare that will be issued shortly as part of the 'Farm to Fork' strategy.
For the different farming systems, the opinion describes a total of 16 animal welfare impacts, considered by EFSA experts as highly relevant due to their severity, duration or frequency of occurrence. These include restriction of movement, group stress, heat or cold, or prolonged hunger or thirst.
The EFSA experts made a series of detailed recommendations, including proposals for quantitative or qualitative criteria to address the specific questions on the welfare of farmed pigs that have been raised in the European Citizens' Initiative 'for a new cage-free era'. The EFSA recommends: - that pregnant sows should be kept in groups; - that when suckling piglets, sows are placed in spacious individual pens, notes the NGO Compassion in World Farming EU. Other topics covered (https://aeur.eu/f/2rs ): tail biting, space allocation, enrichment material, weaning and mutilation practices. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)