Risk management strategies: monitoring and surveillance

For the veterinarian, monitoring and surveillance represent the best means of ensuring sustainable animal production at a time when consumer demands reflect awareness that many of the hazards associated with food animal production can be minimised or avoided through proper management at the primary production level.

Preventive medicine and quality and safety assurance programmes are primarily based on knowledge of the existing strengths and weaknesses of the clients' enterprise and their ability to enact effective intervention measures.

Accordingly, the food animal veterinarian relies upon effective monitoring of current performance and herd health status both for the purpose of maximising efficiency of production and providing an assurance that the primary food product meets required health standards in terms of freedom from those agents of concern that have their origin on the farm.

These agents include foodborne parasites, pathogenic bacteria, some of which display a resistance to antimicrobial agents, contaminants of environmental origin, as well as chemical and pharmaceutical residues.

The more successful these hazards are addressed at the farm, the better the quality and safety of the final product and their marketing possibilities will be.

Communication between the primary producer and the food processing industry that facilitates real-time exchange of information on these issues is essential for the practice of preventive medicine at the herd and flock level.

Integrated food chain quality and safety control programmes, when linked to such monitoring and surveillance principles in regard to both human and animal health, represent the means of achieving sustainable food animal production on a global scale, in line with the conclusions of WTO and EU.

Volume 3 of the "Food Safety Assurance and Veterinary Public Health" series addresses this collaborative approach.

Leading international experts from academia, industry and governmental institutions have been identified to deal with the various aspects of this collaborative approach in monitoring and surveillance.