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Since 2009, the county administrative board has been responsible for verifying compliance with the Animal Welfare Act on Swedish farms. In Skåne, there are 17 inspectors who have to inspect thousands of farms, which means that for a year they only have time to conduct routine inspections at 3.5 percent of all sites.
– If we don’t receive a report of misconduct on a farm, it may take a while before we have time to do a routine check there, says Henriette Bonde Nordström, unit manager at the Skåne County Administrative Board.
According to Kvällposten’s calculations, it could theoretically take more than 28.5 years before a farm is inspected by the county administrative board, unless no notification has been received from the farm.
– We are too few and we have too many farms in relation to the amount of labor we have. I wish we could have done more routine checks, but when we also have 2000 reports per year, it is often important to prioritize them first because we know there are often significant animal welfare issues there. Furthermore, we must also give high priority among the notifications we receive.
Do you depend on receiving applications to be able to prioritize correctly?
– If that is. We rely heavily on records. But there are other ways too. In slaughterhouses, for example, the veterinary inspector can tell us if the animals that come in are very dirty and skinny.
According to Henriette Bonde Nordström, administrators and inspectors are exposed to threats or various types of attempts to influence the decisions of the county administrative board at least once a month. This applies in particular to cases preceded by a notification.
– It can be a direct threat to the inspector, or someone threatens to kill themselves if we take care of the animals. You may be told that “we know where you live” or that someone “knows people who can do things” if you make decisions about, for example, animal bans.
For security reasons, they often visit so-called reported cases in pairs and, in rarer cases, get help from the police.
– We have absolutely had inspectors who had to obtain a protected identity because of their work. That is what it seems.
This is how the Animal Welfare Act is enforced on Scanian farms
In the Skåne County Board of Directors, there are 17 inspectors who are responsible for checking approx. 7000 farms, slaughterhouses and transporters. In a year, 3.5 percent of them have time for routine visits. In addition, they have 2,000 applications and 200 applications for permits to drive annually.
In most inspections conducted by the county administrative board, they find that the Animal Welfare Act is not being complied with. During routine inspections, 60 percent receive feedback and during post-notification inspections, deficiencies are discovered in 70 percent of cases. During the pandemic, when the county administrative board conducted fewer inspections in the field and handled more cases from offices, the figure is 78 percent.
Source: Animal Welfare Unit, Skåne County Administrative Board
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