Health and Food – highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI)
The Council of the EU released a notification on 24 May 2022 that the Council’s Working Party on Animals and Veterinary approved conclusions on a “strategic approach for the development of vaccination as a complementary tool for the prevention and control” of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), an epizootic. Conclusions do not have legal effects. These types of documents only set up political commitments or positions and therefore are not legally binding. These specific conclusions are targeted specifically at the poultry sector. They emphasize the dangers of the disease, including its ability to spread rapidly across national borders and cause devastating socio-economic consequences. If infected, current eradication measures call for rapid depopulation by killing substantial amounts of animals to prevent further infection. This practice is extremely costly. HPAI also poses risks to human health, ranging in severity from mild respiratory problems to fatalities. In order to uphold previous Council conclusions adopted in 2019, the Council stresses the importance of considering additional methods of preventing and controlling avian influenza. One possible avenue of prevention and control is vaccination. Current drawbacks to vaccine usage include costs, the lack of effective and safe HPAI vaccines within the EU, travel restrictions at the Member State level for vaccinated animals, and the absence of updated risk assessments due to insufficient scientific knowledge on the matter. With these concerns in mind, the Council urges joint cooperation between Member States to create a differentiation system to identify vaccinated and unvaccinated animals, calls for updated vaccine efficacy to combat new strains of HPAI, and highlights the Commission’s current initiative to mandate the European Food Safety Authority to update its opinion on vaccination against HPAI in favor of further development and permissibility. The Council also encourages Member States at the national and local levels to conduct vaccination trials, engage in dialogue with trading partners, and conduct cost-benefit analyses for vaccine development and funding. The conclusions are awaiting final approval by the Council’s Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper), i.e. the ambassadors of the EU Member States, to be submitted and published in the Official Journal of the European Union.
