Institutions: stronger veterinary services for better governance.

Veterinary Services (VS) as defined by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) are institutions that can have varied structures, from the centralised to the completely decentralised, with ranges in between these two extremes. The VS include a broad range of public and civil society organisations and actors whose shared purpose is to deliver animal health services, and the interactions of these actors are governed by a range of formal and informal rules. The range of essential services to be carried out by the VS is laid out in the OIE Terrestrial Animal Health Code, which also provides certain key definitions.

Compartmentalisation and zoning: the Dutch perspective.

The aim of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) procedure of compartmentalisation is to contribute to safe trade in live animals and animal products. The fundamental requirement for its application is that the population considered for trade remains epidemiologically separate from populations of higher risk. Compartmentalisation makes use of a functional separation through management, taking into account all relevant epidemiological factors.

The concept of compartmentalisation.

The rationale for establishing trade 'regions' and 'zones' is based on principles of epidemiological science and risk analysis that assess and manage animal disease risks so that the safety of trade can be ensured. However, the boundaries of geographical regions and zones may readily be breached through numerous epidemiological pathways. The concept of a 'compartment' extends the application of a 'risk boundary' beyond that of a geographical interface and considers all epidemiological factors that can contribute to the creation of an effective boundary.