In her government statement, Bavaria's Minister of Agriculture Michaela Kaniber announced that she was going to step out of tethering.
In an interview with our newspaper, she explains why she does not want to set a deadline and what investments she now recommends to farmers.
Ms. Kaniber, you have announced that you will be phasing out tethering. How are you going to do it?
With an advisory offensive and with even better funding.
We still have around 10,000 companies in Bavaria that keep tethering all year round.
We'd like to take all of them with us on the new path.
The agricultural offices approach the farms and sound out: Can a tied stall be turned into a playpen?
Is there direct access to pasture?
How can more animal welfare be made possible?
Initial feedback from the authorities shows that the telephones are overheating.
Many want to take advantage of the advice.
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Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber.
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You will not reach all 10,000 businesses with your advice. What do you do with the others?
I know that this is a show of strength.
But anyone who wants to stay in milk production in the long term is looking for contact with us anyway.
If someone prefers to realign their business, that's fine too: beef fattening instead of dairy farming, for example.
Unfortunately, we will also lose one or the other family farm, for example if there is no successor to the farm anyway.
Will there be a fixed date from which year-round tethering will no longer be allowed?
What we are currently experiencing in consumer behavior is a growing, deep conviction to consume food from animal welfare.
As a result, many dairies have set themselves the goal of not collecting milk from year-round tethering from 2025 onwards.
The trade moves with it.
So the date is more or less set.
So does the market determine the exit?
The Free State of Bavaria funded the last tethered stall in 1991.
We did our homework.
In principle, the farmers have known what to expect since that time.
It is no longer possible to simply continue as before.
Otherwise, in the future, we will only find pasture milk from Ireland or Northern Germany on our supermarket shelves.
The issues of animal welfare and environmental protection are not temporary phenomena, they are profound changes in the consciousness of consumers.
Many farmers rely on combined farming, a mix of tethered farming and pasture. Does that have a future?
I advocated this type of husbandry because it is an appropriate solution for alpine pastures, for example.
But honesty also means that if you want to stay in milk production for the long term, you should do everything you can to take a big step now and not always just do what is just necessary.
There are also many tailor-made conversion solutions up to and including playpen that are suitable for smaller businesses.
And by the way, it doesn't help if a member of the cabinet with Hubert Aiwanger stands up and casts doubts as to whether these animal welfare stalls are really the right way to go.
It's like a doctor advising me to keep going if I have health problems, just because the truth may be uncomfortable.
Would you recommend a farmer to invest in combi rearing today?
Farmers keep asking me that.
I can only recommend building a playpen if you want to stay in milk production in the long term.
If possible, even with direct access to pasture.
Of course, not everyone can do that.
But any other recommendation would be irresponsible.
The farmers need an honest, responsible, reliable answer and they need planning security.
It is us who create this planning security with long-term recommendations, not the ones who advise "close your eyes and through".
The farmers say, but then the conditions for new animal welfare stalls must also be created with the building law.
That's right.
The requirements for immission control are a particular problem here.
We want - and I am already in discussion with Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber - to achieve a regulation with which the smaller Bavarian companies are relieved of these strict rules.
But one thing is clear: we all want more animal welfare, but then we also have to allow and accept it.
And I oppose the same parameters being applied to our family farms in immission control as to large farms in the north and east.
Interview: Dominik Göttler
