Member States shall ensure that each breeder, supplier and user has a designated veterinarian with expertise in laboratory animal medicine, or a suitably qualified expert where more appropriate, charged with advisory duties in relation to the well-being and treatment of the animals.

Cattle producers in the Rossburn area were concerned with this recent discovery of TB in local wildlife (0910) The government response was that this was an isolated incident of bovine TB, and that the TB-positive elk was likely an innocent bystander that contracted the disease from cattle herds.

before the 2001 crisis the Commission did not subject the arrangements for prevention and control of the disease to adequate evaluation that took account of the changes in the risk factors; as the Commission did not carry out comprehensive evaluations and inspections in time, a number of weaknesses in the prevention and control arrangements concerning protective measures at borders, animal feed, animal movements and notification of the disease were not corrected before the outbreak of the epidemic; during the crisis the Commission rapidly took the necessary emergency measures, such as notification of the disease to the Member States, ...[+++]surveillance and slaughter of sheep which had been imported from the United Kingdom before the crisis began, and the closure of markets; the shortcomings in the system and in its application in the Member States in respect of the number of vets, notification of the disease and the speed at which culling was carried out were identified by the Commission during the crisis but it was too late to remedy them; the way in which the Community financing system was applied during the crisis led to inconsistencies: the reimbursement rates for the various animal diseases have been aligned only for the pig sector; there were delays in reimbursements to Member States; during the crisis, in the absence of a more clearly defined Community framework, the Member States were able to introduce a variety of systems to compensate farmers, based on varying methods of assessing the value of the animals before slaughter; after the crisis many shortcomings were remedied; nevertheless, the financial framework has not been revised and a number of Community measures are still inadequate with regard to the supervision of farms, notification of disease and speed in culling; these could compromise the effectiveness of the prevention and control arrangements in containing a future epidemic, while the Community would be obliged to reimburse the expenditure ...

(2) In exceptional circumstances, such as the outbreak of infectious diseases, accidental contaminations or natural phenomenons, the stockbreeders can afford difficulties in obtaining supply of feedingstuffs of organic origin and an authorisation has to be granted, on temporary basis and in a limited way, by the competent authority of the Member State, in view of the use of feedingstuffs not originating from organic farming.

The Union has granted a financial contribution of €890 000 to support Bulgaria for certain measures like surveillance, database, information campaigns, laboratories and disinfection aiming to control the spreading of FMD in wild animals in the South-East of Bulgaria in 2011-2012.

Aid is paid to cattle farmers for the loss of bovine animals as a result of disease, provided the farmers in question have agreed to the monitoring provided for in existing legislation on disease control and to preventive measures on their farm designed to deal with the various diseases it is exposed to.