Under its 'Better Training for Safer Food' initiative, the Directorate-General for Health and Consumers of the European Commission (DG SANCO) is organising training workshops and training assistance missions for third countries to improve control of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and other animal diseases such as Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD).

This project is designed to ensure that officials involved in animal disease control in third countries and countries trading with the EU are properly informed and trained to develop efficient strategies for animal disease control, in particular HPAI and FMD. The 14 countries involved in this project are Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, China, Russia, and the Philippines.

The project, implemented on behalf of DG SANCO by DEVELOPMENT Solutions, will consist of laboratory workshops and sustained training missions. The laboratory workshops will provide training in state-of-the-art virological and serological methods of diagnosis and other suitable techniques in an EU accredited laboratory so that participants are in a position to fully apply the techniques in their home countries. The sustained training missions on outbreak management will provide the competent authorities in beneficiary countries with tools to develop national and regional measures for prevention and management of HPAI, FMD and/or other animal diseases as appropriate.

This websites offers project status updates, an overview of workshop presentations, animal health news, relevant web links, and a background on DG SANCO’s efforts to improve training for safer food. We hope that you will visit the E-learning portal, aimed at providing useful information and simulation exercises for distance learning on animal diseases. If you have a question or would like to start a discussion, please visit our discussion board to communicate with other interested visitors or contact us directly.