Ref. Ares(2019)2663563 - 16/04/2019
EUROPEAN COMMISSION 
DIRECTORATE-GENERAL FOR HEALTH AND FOOD SAFETY             
 
Health and food audits and analysis     
Director    
Grange, 
SANTE.F2 
 
 
Subject: 
Reference number: DG(SANTE)/Project P16632- TAILS missions 
Information from the Commission on advisory recommendations from 
TAILS missions to assist Member States and the pig sector in preventing 
tail biting and avoiding routine tail docking of pigs and request to publish 
action plans 
 
Dear 
,  
With regard to disseminating the results of the recently completed TAILS missions, please 
find enclosed the collated recommendations from the four countries visited. As you know, 
these are advisory recommendations and you may consider them as peer-to-peer advice. As 
stated in the TAILS mission plan and in agreement with your services these 
recommendations will also be forwarded to the pig sector and to the Federation of 
Veterinarians in Europe (FVE).  
The Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety's current project to reduce the systematic 
tail docking of pigs in the EU is now entering its final phase.  We are carrying out four audits 
in 2019 to gauge progress with the implementation of the action plans. The next step is to 
review possible options for enforcement of legal requirements for those Member States, 
which have not taken satisfactory action to reach full compliance. 
As you may recall from the recent presentations in Grange in November 2018 and at the 
Chief Veterinary Officers' meeting of 30 January 2019, progress with the implementation of 
action plans remains unsatisfactory in many Member States. In this regard, we are providing 
the following information, which may be of interest to your service and stakeholders:  
x  The collated TAILS recommendations in the Annex; 
 
x  We have uploaded presentations given by the Competent Authorities and the pig and 
research sectors during the TAILS missions to the Directorate for health and food 
audits and analysis open access CIRCABC platform on pigs at Reducing Tail Biting 
 
  
Secretaria General de Agricultura y Alimentación  
Dirección General de Sanidad de la Producción Agraria  
Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación (MAPA)  
c/Almagro, 33 -
  
ES-28010 Madrid 
European Commission, Grange, Dunsany C15 DA39, Co. Meath, Ireland - Office: GRAN 
 
Tel.: direct line 
, internal n°: 
, switchboard: 
. Fax: 
 

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and Routine Tail Docking of Pigs. We will also upload to the platform a compilation 
of additional anonymised questions from the pig sector and responses from the TAILS 
team that are not covered in the TAILS recommendations.  
 
x  Three Member States have already uploaded their action plans to the Commission's 
Animal Welfare Platform: https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/welfare/eu-platform-
animal-welfare_en. This information can serve as a useful resource for other Member 
States and potentially prevent duplication and wasted effort.  
 
If you have not already done so, we urge you to publish your action plan in order to allow 
other Member States to share any possible best practices detailed therein. Please send your 
action plans for publication on the Commission's EU Animal Welfare Platform to: 
@ext.ec.europa.eu. We also intend to share them on the CIRCABC platform 
on pigs. Therefore, when sending your action plans, please put sante-consult-
xx@xx.xxxxxx.xx in copy.  
 
I would be grateful if you could quote the reference number above in all correspondence. 
 
Yours sincerely, 
 
 
(e-signed) 
Paola Colombo  
Director 
 
Encl.:   Annex: Advisory Recommendations from TAILS experts 
 
 
2 
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