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How is animal welfare going in Germany?
In the publications of Federal Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner grievances are hardly mentioned
Photo: Rupert Oberhäuser / picture alliance
Nobody can claim that the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) does not care about "animal welfare".
For years, Federal Minister Julia Klöckner's (CDU) house has regularly published texts, studies and brochures in which the word appears.
The mission: to inform and educate citizens about animal husbandry.
A laudable approach, after all, most consumers can hardly see through the debate and it is growing in intensity.
Animal rights activists and activists denounce businesses that violate animal welfare, including through the media, and farmers and animal owners feel unjustly in the pillory.
The criticism often voiced by farmers that citizens simply no longer know what animal husbandry looks like is not unjustified.
However, the responsible ministry, which does not convey this reality, is also to blame for this.
A federal ministry should provide the citizens with information with which they should be able to make a reasonably well-founded assessment of the situation and how they behave themselves.
This is exactly what the Federal Agriculture Information Center (BZL), which is subordinate to the BMEL, sees as its task: it »informs consumers independently and neutrally about agriculture«.
But the Klöckner Ministry apparently sees its task more in defending the current animal husbandry and downplaying the problems.
At least that is the conclusion of a systematic analysis of the “consumer portals” Landwirtschaft.de, tierwohl.de and specialist reports from the federal government commissioned by the consumer organization Foodwatch.
The report was available to SPIEGEL before publication.
(It can now be downloaded here.)
"The Federal Government is thus thwarting the long overdue social discourse about animal-friendly livestock husbandry."
Matthias Wolfschmidt, international strategy director at Foodwatch
The question was whether these portals as well as relevant reports from the BMEL also adequately reflect the abuses in the breeding, accommodation, care and slaughter of animals.
Foodwatch summarizes the result as follows: whitewash instead of facts.
The BMEL disseminates tendentious information about livestock husbandry, websites, brochures and reports from the federal government glossed over conditions in Germany's stables.
Matthias Wolfschmidt, veterinarian and international strategy director at Foodwatch, says that German agriculture makes "thousands upon thousands of farm animals systematically sick: behavior disorders, illnesses, pain and suffering are the order of the day in many stalls".
He criticizes that there is no mention of animal suffering in the BMEL publications.
"In doing so, the federal government is thwarting the long overdue social discourse on animal welfare," says Wolfschmidt.
A discussion of critical voices in science and veterinary medicine hardly takes place in the publications.
Independent of the Scientific Advisory Board for Agricultural Policy, Nutrition and Consumer Health Protection (WBAE), specialist publications have long been drawing attention to "production diseases" in animals, i.e. diseases that are directly caused by animal husbandry.
In the Federal Government's 2019 Animal Welfare Report in particular, one expects an overview of the situation of animals, in particular the currently rampant production diseases such as mouth disease or pus infections.
However, the report does not provide this.
The BMEL declined to give a concrete statement before the report was published, but wrote on request: “The basis of our publications in the field of livestock and for the term animal welfare is the Animal Protection Act
.
The corporate design of the federal government is the basis for the design of our brochures.
As far as the content is concerned, we present the facts objectively. "
"Good animal welfare" or "bad animal welfare"?
The use of the term “animal welfare” in the publications is particularly interesting; it has become a central term in the debate on animal husbandry - although it has never been precisely defined.
In contrast to the legally defined “well-being”, this does not actually mean a positive feeling.
Both the WBAE advisory board, as well as Landwirtschaft.de and tierwohl.de, differentiate between a “good animal welfare situation” and “poor animal welfare”.
A state “animal welfare label” for meat products is unlikely to help consumers understand how the pigs, cattle and chickens were doing in their stables.
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Screenshot of the website tierwohl-staerken.de
Photo: Landwirtschaft.de
According to the report, there are two factors that distort the presentation: the direct glossing over of individual measures and the omission of critical aspects.
A couple of specific examples from Landwirtschaft.de: The navigation point »Livestock« is intended to show how cattle, poultry and pigs are kept for food in Germany.
Examples of animal husbandry in Germany are shown under the heading “View into the stable”.
The list begins with a farm that has suckler cows.
Without any prior knowledge, the impression may arise that this is a typical example farm, with suckler cow husbandry representing only a small proportion of the cattle husbandry methods.
Tethering, which is problematic from an animal welfare point of view, is widespread, but is not clearly described in terms of its negative effects on animals.
The following are other positive examples of husbandry practices that are not representative of conventional animal husbandry.
Under the heading “This is how pigs live” it says: “A closed, air-conditioned stable without bedding is the standard in conventional pig farming.
Shielded from external influences, it is possible to achieve a high level of hygiene.
Diseases are not easily transmitted. «What is missing, however:
that around a fifth of all pigs kept in Germany (around 13 million animals) do not survive the fattening period and end up in carcass disposal facilities;
that an estimated 90 percent of the pigs kept in Germany develop hoof diseases, almost half with the highest degree of severity;
that the aforementioned legal minimum requirements for keeping pigs are under massive pressure from a scientific point of view;
the finding by the Higher Administrative Court in Magdeburg in 2016 that a large part of the crate stands used in Germany was illegal at the time;
that the State of Berlin considers the legal requirements for pig keeping to be incompatible with the Animal Welfare Act and therefore not in conformity with the constitution;
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Information on pig farming on Landwirtschaft.de
Photo: tierwohl-staerken.de
The selection of cattle is similarly selective, for example not mentioned
that almost half of the dairy cows in Germany develop lameness;
that every fifth cattle in Germany still lives tethered and that the German Federal Council voted in a resolution in 2016 in favor of a ban on this keeping because it was "not an animal-friendly system within the meaning of Section 2 of the Animal Welfare Act";
that according to a study in Germany and Austria, every tenth cattle is still able to perceive and feel after the (first) bolt shot has been fired.
“Sometimes,” the report says, “the presentation of animal husbandry on the websites in question is more like a marketing initiative than an objective education.
The perspective of the animals - and their multiple suffering - is largely excluded. "
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Publication on farm animal husbandry by the BMEL
Photo: bmel.de
In any case, it is not possible for consumers on this basis to get a realistic picture of German agriculture, let alone to make an informed purchase decision in the supermarket, writes Foodwatch.
The presentation in the publications is also surprising because they not only ignore some of the specialist publications, but also contradict the assessment of their own scientific advisory board (WBAE), which diagnoses “considerable deficits, especially in the area of animal welfare” and therefore “the current housing conditions of the majority of farm animals are not considered sustainable «.
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