Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/1972
of 30 October 2017
amending Annexes I and III to Regulation (EC) No 999/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards a surveillance programme for chronic wasting disease in cervids in Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden and repealing Commission Decision 2007/182/EC
(Text with EEA relevance)
THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,
Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,
Whereas:
Regulation (EC) No 999/2001 lays down rules for the prevention, control and eradication of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) in bovine, ovine and caprine animals. It applies to the production and placing on the market of live animals and products of animal origin and in certain specific cases to exports thereof.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a TSE affecting cervids, which is widespread in North America. To date, CWD has not been reported in the Union territory; however it was detected for the first time in Norway in April 2016, in a reindeer. Norway subsequently intensified its surveillance programme for CWD in cervids and detected a number of other cases of CWD in reindeers and in moose.
Article 6(1) of Regulation (EC) No 999/2001 provides that each Member State is to carry out an annual monitoring programme for TSEs based on active and passive surveillance in accordance with Annex III to that Regulation.
Requirements for a three-year surveillance programme for CWD in Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden should therefore be added in Chapter A of Annex III to Regulation (EC) No 999/2001, based on the recommendations included in the EFSA opinion. These requirements should be considered as minimum requirements to be complied with by the Member States concerned. These Member States may however further refine their CWD surveillance programme to adapt to their particular situation.
In addition, the laboratory protocols and testing methods to be used for the CWD monitoring programme as well as the measures to be taken following CWD testing should be clarified in Part III of Chapter A Annex III.
As recommended in the EFSA opinion, the three-year monitoring programme for CWD should target, on the one-hand, farmed and captive cervids, and on the other hand, wild and semi-domesticated cervids. In order to ensure legal certainty, definitions of ‘farmed and captive cervids’, ‘wild cervids’ and ‘semi-domesticated cervids’ should be inserted in Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 999/2001.
Article 6(4) of Regulation (EC) No 999/2001 provides that Member States are to submit to the Commission an annual report on their TSE monitoring activities. Part I(A) of Chapter B of Annex III to that Regulation lays down the information which the Member States are to include in their annual report, via regular submissions to the EU TSE database and/or inclusion in the annual report. Part II of that Chapter provides that the EFSA is to analyse the information included by the Member States in their annual report and to publish annually a report on the trends and sources of TSE in the Union. Reporting requirements covering the three-year CWD surveillance programme should be inserted in Part I(A) of Chapter B to Annex III in order to ensure that the data obtained from this programme is submitted by the Member States concerned to the EU TSE database and thus enable their inclusion and analysis in the EU annual summary report for TSE monitoring, to be produced by EFSA in accordance with Part II of that Chapter.
HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: