Benessere animale e sistema ClassyFarm nell'allevamento bovino da latte.

Abstract

At present animal welfare is a topic more and more discussed for many reasons: there’s an increasing concern from people on the well-being of farm animals that influences their choices as consumers, plus different studies show the close relationship between animal welfare and health, meaning that a poor welfare can lead to poor health and therefore determine an increased spread of infectious diseases, including zoonotic diseases. In this situation dairy farms play an important role since they were involved in some serious zoonoses, such as BSE in the ‘90s, and are a source of air, water and soil pollution contributing to the climate change, a severe issue for the future which can lead to an increased risk of zoonosis. The higher the spread of infectious diseases, the greater the chances of disease in animals and, therefore, the use of antibiotics, which increases and worsens another major problem for animal and human health, i.e. antibiotic-resistance. In the dairy farm antibiotics are used to treat diseases, in particular mastitis which commonly affects high productive animals and represents another possible reason of poor welfare, together with other productive diseases associated with the genetic selection of dairy cows for high productivity. In compliance with the European new strategy “Farm to Fork”, which focuses on prevention within the One Health approach, and considering the entry into application of the Regulation (EU) 2016/429 on animal health and Regulation (EU) 2017/625 on official controls, the Directorate General of Animal Health and Veterinary Medicines of the Ministry of Health developed a new system for the characterization of hazards within the livestock farm called ClassyFarm. This system focuses on the assessment of different areas, such as animal welfare, biosafety and antimicrobial consumption, through an objective and harmonised method performed by veterinarians during self-controls and official controls, aiming to improve the identification of critical points at the farm level in order to better safeguard human and animal health.