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New fields of action for the organization have been set under the plan including:
• More activities directed to food security, poverty alleviation and animal health and veterinary public health.
• More focus on the “One Health” concept and other matters of cooperation with partner organizations.
•The impact of climate and environmental changes on animal disease emergence and occurrence as well as the impact of animal production on climate change.
The plan also provides for continuing priorities emphasized in previous plans:
• Communicating international animal disease and zoonoses information globally.
• Development and implementation of scientifically-based standards and guidelines.
• Prevention, control and eradication methods of animal diseases including zoonoses.
• Compliance with the Good Governance concepts and capacity building for national Veterinary Services.
• Strengthening the organization's influence on policy design, applied research and governance.
• Communicating O.I.E. information.
During the meeting, the World Assembly of Delegates elected Dr. Bernard Vallat by secret ballot for a third five-year mandate as director general of the O.I.E.
Delegates approved the new list of countries and zones that had applied for official O.I.E. recognition of their status with respect to one or more of four priority diseases: bovine spongiform encephalopathy, foot-and-mouth disease, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia and rinderpest.
With regard to B.S.E., the O.I.E. newly recognized India and Peru as having a “negligible risk” status, while the Republic of Korea and Panama were recognized as having a “controlled B.S.E. risk status”.
Botswana, Lesotho, the Philippines, San Marino and Turkey were newly recognized as being “free of F.M.D., with or without vaccination, for all or a part of their territory”. And after close to nine years, Swaziland recovered its F.M.D.-“free status without vaccination”.
O.I.E. iterated the aim it shares with F.A.O. is to be able to declare rinderpest has been eradicated worldwide in 2011.
Delegates accredited two new Collaborating Centres and four new Reference Laboratories, bringing the number of official centers of scientific excellence within the O.I.E. worldwide network to 227.
In line with O.I.E.'s continuous engagement to support Veterinary Services so that it complies with O.I.E. standards on quality, 93 P.V.S. (Performance of Veterinary Services) independent evaluations made by O.I.E.-accredited experts were reported to the Assembly. To date, 22 P.V.S. Gap analysis missions and 11 missions supporting the modernization of legislation have also been carried out worldwide.
Approximately 600 participants, representing O.I.E. members and intergovernmental, regional and national organizations took part in the event.
