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Minister Svenja Schulze: "Implement animal welfare more ambitiously"
Photo:
Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpa
Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner (CDU) is to take concrete steps to implement proposals for better animal husbandry.
Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) calls for this in an interview with the German Press Agency.
"The so-called Borchert Commission has very good proposals for more animal welfare," said Schulze.
The Bundestag and Bundesrat had asked Klöckner's department to take action before the summer vacation.
"Something has to happen now."
The group led by the former Agriculture Minister Jochen Borchert (CDU) presented recommendations in February to improve animal welfare in livestock husbandry.
This requires high investments in stables.
The experts estimated the need for support in pig farming to initially be 1.2 billion euros per year.
To finance this, the group also brought a tax of 40 cents per kilo of meat into play.
After a long discussion, in June Klöckner spoke out in favor of such an "animal welfare tax".
Klöckner has announced the presentation of a feasibility study for spring.
She wants to make legislative proposals during this legislative period - the next Bundestag will be elected at the end of September.
Animal numbers "bind the area"
Minister Schulze called animal welfare one of the great challenges for a »sustainable agriculture«.
In order to move forward, the current reform of the EU agricultural policy must be used.
Germany should "implement this more ambitiously" and not "just adopt the minimum standard of the EU".
One must "tie the animal numbers back to the surface".
Area-based animal husbandry means that farmers are only allowed to keep a certain number of animals, depending on their area.
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jpz / dpa