Last update: 08/2005
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What is ADNS?
Objectives
How does it work?
Achievements
Who benefits?
The role of IDA
Background information
Technical information
Documentation
What is ADNS?
The Animal Disease Notification System (ADNS) automates animal disease outbreak notifications between Member States and is routed through the European Commission's Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection.
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Objectives
The key objective of ADNS is to reduce future occurrences by facilitating the timely provision of the right information to the appropriate authorities. In this way, the national authorities concerned can evaluate a situation better and take appropriate and swift action where necessary. Another key objective for ADNS is to minimise the number of unnecessarily restrictive measures taken by individual EU Member States. ADNS aims to facilitate localised strategies for disease prevention and control. Ultimately, the system should help to shape future EU veterinary policy.
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How does it work?
Operational since 1985, the ADNS system enables the central veterinary authority of each EU Member State, as well as Andorra, Norway and Switzerland to directly notify both the European Commission and the other EU Member States of new outbreaks of specified notifiable diseases (please see Council Directive 82/894/EEC of 21 December 1982 for further details such as list of diseases and type of information to be given under notification). The European Commission then sends out weekly digests of all outbreaks received during that week to public administrations in participating countries. Reports are also available to EU Member State public administrations. ADNS was updated to allow restricted access to statistical reports to the veterinary services of the member countries via the Internet. To avoid misunderstandings caused by language difficulties between members of the network, specific procedures and codes are used. These cover:
- Region concerned;
- Disease;
- Number of animals on the holding including dead and infected animals;
- Dates of the outbreak and measures taken;
- Origin and control measures taken.
Since some of the information contained in the notification is considered commercially sensitive, a number of security features have been built into the ADNS access and data transmission processes.
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Achievements
- In 2002, about 5,000 messages were received and 52 sent out by the Commission. And the network is still growing- countries such as Switzerland and the EU Acceding and Candidate Countries have been added this year.
- The possibility of mapping disease outbreaks by region was also included in 2002.
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Who benefits?
Citizens: By facilitating information exchange between Member States and the scientific expert community, the system helps to protect the health of consumers.
Businesses: It also avoids unnecessarily restrictive measures being taken unilaterally by any Member State. Under ADNS, each national administration has the opportunity to view the situation from a European rather than a national perspective. Action can be taken in collaboration with neighbouring countries or with those who directly border an infected or 'at risk' region. In this way, livestock farmers throughout the network can feel reassured that they are being treated fairly and in line with their counterparts in other Member States. The ADNS system also provides them with a much-needed 'early warning system'. They can increasingly protect their livestock from the threat of disease.
Public Administrations: Consumer confidence in commercial agriculture has been considerably damaged in recent years following a number of livestock disease outbreaks. However, it is important to note that if the ADNS system had not been in place, the effects of recent livestock disease outbreaks would certainly have been even more catastrophic to the European farming sector. In the future, ADNS can play an important role in restoring consumer trust by improving the communication flow between the European Commission and the Member States. Ultimately, ADNS will help them to find the most appropriate measures to fight disease as and when outbreaks occur.
Professionals: As speed is paramount, harmonising, simplifying and automating the system greatly quickens the information exchange while minimising translation and transcription errors. Standardised information also helps researchers understand the mechanics of disease outbreaks and provides the statistics so central to forecasting and learning from earlier outbreaks.
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The role of IDA
IDA has provided funding for the development of the new system. As the system first started in 1985, IDA supported the modernisation and updating of the telecommunications and interface methods, and the training needs of the users.
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Background information
A certain number of legislative measures have been introduced or amended following the outbreaks of diseases. In addition, a new Council Directive 2002/99/EC of 16 December 2002 laying down the animal health rules governing the production, processing, distribution and introduction of products of animal origin for human consumption has been agreed in order to respond more effectively to consumer needs and to eliminate disparities between Member States concerning health rules affecting meat and meat products coming from a Member State where an animal disease has appeared.
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Technical Information
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Documentation: |
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ADNS- GIP (PDF)
