Overview report of the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety on a series of fact-finding visits carried out in 2017 in order to evaluate member states' strategy for, and the design and operation of risk mitigation measures and surveillance for avian influenza in poultry and wild birds

This report presents an overview of the information gathered during a series of fact-finding visits carried out in four Member States in 2017 and is part of a wider Commission initiative to evaluate and review surveillance for avian influenza viruses and the measures to prevent their transmission. EU legal provisions to prevent the continuous threat of incursions and spread of avian influenza from wild birds in poultry are regularly updated according to the best available expert advice. They give Member States sufficient flexibility to apply a wide range of biosecurity and risk mitigation measures. Member States must identify high risk areas in their territories, and time periods where they have to apply intensified preventive actions. While the initial application of those updated provisions was confronted with technical difficulties - which delayed their implementation - and with certain reluctance from the industry in some Member States; their progressive incorporation to the routine preventive policies in all Member States is proving to be very effective. The close interaction between the industry and the competent authorities has been instrumental to that. This renewed cooperation should be translated into preventive policies and applicable measures that are geographically tailored and adapted to each type of poultry production, and which are also accompanied with regular official checks on their implementation. However, there is still significant room for improvement in this respect in the majority of Member States. There is wide consensus between all the parties involved in this series of fact-finding visits that early detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry and in wild birds should be the main objective of any EU surveillance programme for avian influenza. The poultry industry expressed their view that they do not see the added value of the current surveillance and control policy for low pathogenic avian influenza. According to them and to a number of Member States; such policy frequently leads to unjustified market losses, and they are sceptical about the assumption that this policy may contribute to prevent episodes of highly pathogenic avian influenza in the same poultry populations. The EU guidelines on surveillance for avian influenza need regular review and update in order to further enhance the effectiveness of the surveillance programmes applied by Member States to detect the disease rapidly and, if still considered appropriate; to optimise the surveillance efforts in order to get a better picture of the circulating strains of low pathogenicity avian influenza viruses. A good surveillance strategy should be soundly risk-based on updated epidemiological information regarding highly pathogenic avian influenza and, to a lesser extent, low pathogenic avian influenza. Surveillance efforts to detect circulation of low pathogenic avian influenza viruses could focus on areas of the EU, with specific risks such as important populations of domestic waterfowl, with high density of commercial poultry farms, and with a higher potential of exposure to strains from wild birds (e.g. outdoor holdings). There is high variability on how Member States monitor avian influenza in wild birds and how they use the information obtained. The application in practice of the criteria to be used to select the geographical areas and species sampled varies significantly between Member States. Since the risks ornithological and epidemiological support to delineate these risk areas more precisely. Most of the experts support evolving towards an EU-wide seasonally and geographically risk-based surveillance system that collects sufficient dead wild birds to get meaningful results, while also considering targeted sampling from selected populations of healthy (sentinel) wild birds in areas where the risk of exposure to infected migratory wild birds is considered high. Surveillance in wild birds should rely on the identification of those geographical areas and periods of the year that would maximise its effectiveness as an early warning system for the incursion and circulation of strains of highly pathogenic avian influenza in wild birds.