A missed opportunity

The report was drawn up at the initiative of Parliament’s Agriculture Committee, which is comprised of MEPs with close ties to animal agriculture interests.

Regrettably, the assembly turned a deaf year to input from the Parliament’s Environment Committee which sought to mitigate the contribution of animal farming to the climate and biodiversity crisis and address the rise of antimicrobial resistance and other crucial issues.

Most importantly, the Environment Committee called for a fundamental shift in our agricultural system away from factory farming and towards extensive animal agriculture as one of the quickest and most effective ways to improve on-farm animal welfare.

Such changes are essential to achieving the goals of the European Commission’s ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy for a more sustainable food system and realising the Commission’s intention of revising EU animal welfare legislation with the aim of improving animal welfare and banning caged farming.

The report as voted thus misses the opportunity to make a positive contribution to those processes.

A deeply flawed Report

Besides completely missing its stated objective by devoting much of the text to the economic interests of farmers rather than the welfare of their animals, the report also contradicts previous Parliament positions. For example, whereas the assembly’s resolution last year on the Farm to Fork strategy highlighted the importance of setting higher animal welfare standards in legislation, today’s text merely calls for more clarity rather than a tightening-up of the rules.

Furthermore, despite the numerous well-documented violations of EU animal welfare legislation across Europe, the report warns against drawing general conclusions that such abuse is widespread.

The voted text even goes as far as implying that the force-feeding of geese and ducks in the production of foie gras “respect(s) the animals’ biological parameters and comply with animal welfare criteria” — thus contradicting not only the view of countless animal welfare experts but also of Parliament’s own resolution last year calling for a ban on force-feeding, which it termed “cruel and unnecessary”.