Federal Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner wants to score with initiatives on animal welfare.
When meeting her EU colleagues, she puts pressure on animal transports and fur farming.
The seas are also on the agenda.
Luxembourg - At the beginning of the hot phase of the federal election campaign, Federal Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner shows a heart for animals: Together with other EU countries, she wants to achieve a Europe-wide ban on the breeding of fur animals and long animal transports to other EU countries.
She put the corresponding initiatives on the agenda on Monday at a meeting with her counterparts from the other EU countries.
In terms of transport, the focus is primarily on Morocco, Turkey, Russia, the Middle East and Asia.
"Animal welfare must not stop at the EU borders," said Klöckner.
The background to this is that it cannot be guaranteed that animal welfare requirements will be complied with on the long journeys.
Austria's Agriculture Minister Elisabeth Köstinger spoke about the fact that animals outside the EU could have their tendons cut before slaughter.
This is why the EU Commission is now calling for EU-wide rules to be drawn up to prohibit long animal transports to third countries by road and by ship.
In addition, the Commission must ensure short-term improvements pending a ban.
The aim is not only to transport animals for slaughter, but also to transport animals for breeding.
Klöckner said that in the future genetic material should be sent, but no animals.
Greens and animal rights activists generally welcomed the minister's initiative, but criticized Klöckner for having repeatedly stood in the way of a ban at the federal level.
Transports to countries outside the EU have been the subject of criticism for a long time.
Depending on the region, a ban would have different effects on Germany: Several federal states have already issued restrictions or bans.
In addition to cattle and sheep, there is also good news for minks. In future, they could no longer be bred and killed for coats and hats in the EU. Austria, the Netherlands and Germany are calling for a Europe-wide ban on fur farming. "A general ban on fur farming in the EU is overdue," said Klöckner. This move has virtually no impact on Germany either. High hurdles have meant that there have been no commercial mink farms in the Federal Republic for many years, as the Ministry of Agriculture announced.
The industry hit the headlines during the corona pandemic because millions of minks were killed in Denmark and the Netherlands after infections with the virus were detected. The Netherlands - once one of the largest mink fur producers in Europe - have already decided to end fur farming. The last mink farms are scheduled to close in 2024.
In addition to other topics, two other animal and nature conservation topics were on the agenda. Stricter control of fisheries is currently being discussed in Europe. Many fish stocks are depleted, the marine ecosystem is suffering from intensive management and climate change. Klöckner promises effective controls to protect stocks. Species conservationists from WWF fear, however, that Germany is campaigning for insufficient surveillance in the so-called fisheries control ordinance.
In view of overfished seas, it is negligent if Federal Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner (CDU) campaigns to ensure that controls for most fishing vessels do not take effect, said Christoph Heinrich, nature conservation director of WWF Germany.
Seven out of eight important fish stocks in the Baltic Sea are already overfished.
Camera surveillance on board is currently only intended for ships of a certain size.
The Ministry of Agriculture does not deny that such controls only affect a small part of the fleet, but emphasizes that the large ships recorded are responsible for 90 percent of the fish catch.
In the evening, better protection for bees should also be discussed at the meeting. Specifically, it is about a threshold value for certain chemicals that are used in agriculture. Then the use of certain pesticides, for example, would only kill a certain proportion of a bee colony. One of the debates is whether this value should be uniform across Europe. dpa