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Julia Klöckner: "Meat will get more expensive, it will get more expensive"

2021-06-10T01:47:17.715Z


More animal welfare, higher costs: In the SPIEGEL Talk, Federal Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner advocates higher VAT on meat. She advises her CDU against a coalition under a green chancellor.


Federal Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner (CDU) has spoken out in favor of increasing meat prices.

"Meat will get more expensive, it will get more expensive," she said in the SPIEGEL top-level conversation with moderator Markus Feldenkirchen.

The background is the proposals of the so-called Borchert Commission.

This commission, headed by the former Federal Minister of Agriculture Jochen Borchert, has developed ideas on how animal husbandry can be changed in order to ensure more animal welfare - and also proposed how the necessary renovation measures for the stables could be financed.

Either through a special animal welfare tax or a higher value added tax.

Klöckner spoke out in favor of an increase in VAT.

Critics complain that a VAT increase would make expensive meat that has already been produced to higher standards more expensive than cheap meat.

This could put meat with high ecological and animal welfare standards at a competitive disadvantage.

The Minister of Agriculture defended herself against criticism in the SPIEGEL Talk, her animal welfare projects were progressing too slowly: "We are as advanced as we have never been in animal welfare." For example, she banned torture breeding in dogs, took action against piglet castration without anesthesia and the killing of chicks, and also introduced that animal carcasses would be examined for traces of animal abuse.

The law against the killing of chicks, which according to the coalition agreement should have come into force in the middle of the coalition, has been prepared. In such a way that it can stand against lawsuits. The hatcheries should not be banned from exercising their profession: "That is why we created the alternatives," said Klöckner. The aim is to recognize the sex of the chick in the egg after just a few days. Male chicks would not hatch like this in the first place.

When asked whether it would not be ethically better to let all the chicks grow up, even if roosters put on less meat, Klöckner said: "If we do not abort children, it is also ethically clearer."

When asked whether it was comparable, she said that she had not said: “Isn't it ethically better not to kill life?

You have to ask yourself this question in principle.

We are already at the meta level. "

The fact that there is still no animal welfare label is not due to her.

"I delivered, I did my homework," said Klöckner.

Parliament was blocking, she criticized.

Observers are certain that the law will no longer come in this legislative period.

Klöckner's plan does not go far enough for the SPD, and there is also resistance in the Union parliamentary group.

Klöckner also commented on current political issues.

The CDU deputy chairwoman rejected a green-black coalition under a green chancellor: "I don't want to imagine that at all and I wouldn't advise joining a coalition with the Greens as a junior partner," she said.

Criticism from the Greens that the Green candidate for Chancellor Annalena Baerbock is criticized as a woman particularly harshly, she described as a diversionary maneuver.

You have to be measured by what you stand for in terms of content: "If a Mr. Maaßen or someone else had somehow individualized their curriculum vitae as often as Ms. Baerbock, there would be something going on in the country."

About the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen, who is running as a direct candidate for the CDU in southern Thuringia, Klöckner also said that he stands for a very conservative wing of the CDU. "I wouldn't call him a party friend now." But it is to be respected that a district association nominated him according to democratic principles. Klöckner did not comment on whether she would keep her fingers crossed for him. However, she pointed out that the CDU was in competition with the AfD for people who threatened to become radicalized.

"Frightening and frightening for the citizens," she called the raising of the retirement age to 68, suggested by a government advisory body.

The former religion teacher said about the Catholic Church: »What more than irritates me: To prohibit homosexual couples from being blessed in today's world.

If the blessing of God is important to someone, then one can be happy first of all. "

jos

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-06-10

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