On 11th November 2021, the EASVO General Assembly took place in Brussels and virtually by "GoToMeeting"
A small group of our of members were pleased to meet in person in Brussels, with the rest of the GA attending virtually, ably supported by Wiebke from the FVE team. We agreed to support all of the items for vote on the FVE General Assembly agenda, including our votes for the nominees for FVE VP and the Finance Committee, and enjoyed interesting discussions on several issues.
As usual a significant proportion of our discussions were on Animal Welfare and we were grateful to be joined by Sean Wensley, chair of the FVE AWWG, to discuss the FVE papers for vote, on welfare friendly farrowing systems for pigs and the FVE AW strategy. We then heard a report from Conny, who had represented the FVE and EASVO at an OIE workshop on welfare during the long distance transport of animals. During these discussions we agreed to recommend that FVE and the AWWG consider the prioritisation of Pig AW issues in the FVE AW Strategy and the output of Conny’s report on the OIE workshop.
Importantly we also discussed EASVO business, and heard that our finances were in good health. We also reviewed our statutes in light of the exceptional disruption to EASVO’s work, caused by Covid-19, and after adopting a new clause, the GA voted in favour of the current EASVO board continuing to serve for a further 2 year term.
In our roundtable we discussed some of the challenges and opportunities that OVs have faced during Covid-19, we have continued to respond to the challenges of Animal Health notifiable diseases, but we also have worked effectively in multi-disciplinary teams and this provides an excellent framework for the future. We all agreed that this is a valuable agenda item and that we would like to spend more time on it at our next GA, when we hope to finally meet in person in London.
And last, but not least, we agreed to develop the EASVO strategy, by correspondence, for further discussion and potentially adoption, at the June GA in London.
