The Swiss-Ukrainian Program “Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector in Ukraine” (hereinafter – the Program) continues to provide technical assistance to the SSUFSCP in integration of risk-based concepts in risk management by the competent authority.
Thus, on 30 October 2020, the next event – the first coordination meeting of the Expert Working Group was held online. It is the first time a number of experts from scientific and research institutions, whose activities within the Expert Working Group will be coordinated by the SSUFSCP Risk Assessment Unit, have gathered to conduct a real risk assessment.
Kateryna Chuzhakina, Chief Specialist of the SSUFSCP Risk Assessment Unit, Expert Working Group Coordinator, noted in her welcome word:
We have a mandate on risk assessment of impact of live vaccines against poultry Salmonellosis in the parent flock and preparing the report with scientifically-based evidence to support risk managers’ decision-making. The SSUFSCP Risk Assessment Unit coordinates the risk assessment process by involving a pool of relevant independent experts and specialist of scientific and research institutions. Selection of experts to the Expert Working Group is tedious work during which both theoretical and practical experience was considered, because formation of a justified expert opinion is extremely important to achieve an objective risk assessment result.
The objective of the coordination meeting was, first, to build the capacity of the experts involved in risk assessment as to real risk assessment, risk analysis concept and stages of risk assessment; second, to familiarize them with the conditions of risk assessment of impact of live vaccines against poultry Salmonellosis in the parent flock , process of involving experts in risk assessment, Expert Working Group’s TORs, risk questions framed and risk pathway elaborated, as well as to start the process of data collection together with the experts.
Manon Schuppers, Director of SAFOSO AG, Program International Expert, highlighted in her welcome speech:
Applying the principle of risk assessment to support decision-making and risk management in animal and human health and food safety is becoming increasingly important. Risk assessment allows a structured approach to data collection and analysis, which allows you to make decisions based on the evidence base. I am pleased that today our group is represented by a wide range of experts with different experience and areas of work. It is very important to involve in the risk assessment not a single expert who should know the answer to all questions, but to involve a group of experts with different backgrounds to jointly collect and analyze all the data.
The participants expressed their interest in the meeting and highlighted the importance of the issue studied. Thus, the involved experts agreed to the conditions of the TORs presented and, during the discussion, distributed the responsibilities for data collection among themselves and established the timeframes. Finally, the participants summarized the meeting results and discussed the next steps.
This event was supported by Switzerland within the framework of the Swiss-Ukrainian Program “Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector in Ukraine” implemented by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL, Switzerland) in partnership with SAFOSO AG (Switzerland), www.qftp.org.
