Turkeys animal selection and animal importation within the scopes of health and technical criteria

A. Ahmet Yücer and Ömer Altıntaş

Abstract: Nowadays, a pandemic has spread all over the world, it is clearly understood how big potential threats are to public health of diseases transmitted from animals to humans. Turkey is imported breeding animal and butchery cattle from different countries to meet their needs. On the other hand, animal import and animal movements have the potential to carry animal diseases to importing countries. Therefore, the animals to be imported must be of good quality and free from diseases. For this purpose, animals are selected within the scope of the WTO SPS agreement in the exporting country. There is a general belief that animal diseases came to Turkey through imports, and adaptation problems were seen due to imported animals don’t meet the technical requirements In this study, has aimed to test this hypothesis. Moreover, Turkey’s policies of animal importation, the import process, applications, and especially animal selection processes were examined, the problems identified, and solutions are presented. In this context, besides literature reviews, primary data were obtained from two expert groups who selected heifer and butchery cattle through questionnaires.
Basic statistical analyzes were made with the data obtained, and whether the difference between opinions of the two expert groups was significant or not was subjected to the Chi-square test. It was seen that the views of the two groups were different from each other on some issues, and this difference was found to be statistically significant in the Chi-square tests. According to the findings obtained as a result of the research, recommendations were presented to decision-makers.

Keywords: animal import; animal selection; butchery cattle; disease and zoonosis; heifer

Date published: 2021-10-19