Opinion: Why are the foxes still in charge of the henhouse?
Dr. Joanna Swabe, senior director of public affairs for Humane Society International/Europe.
Animal welfare is an emotive issue, and not without good reason given that it concerns how we treat other sentient beings, particularly those species exploited for food production.
The more that scientists learn about farmed animals, the clearer it becomes that we should all be doing far more to assure their welfare needs. Indeed, the European Commission itself recently reached this conclusion, making an explicit commitment in the Farm to Fork Strategy to improve farm animal welfare and broaden the scope of the existing legislation by aligning it with the latest scientific evidence.
There is an emotional side to the political debate over animal welfare, but paradoxically, it appears that the most emotional of the stakeholders involved are members of the European Parliament’s AGRI committee. Not that many of them are particularly concerned about preventing animal suffering; it is more a function of their concern that upholding a high standard of welfare could affect profit margins and require fundamental industry change.
Animal welfare science, of course, has precious little to do with sentimentality. It is the body of knowledge gained through the systematic study of animals’ natural behaviour, physiology, nutrition and environmental conditions in which they are kept.
The science tells us, for example, that by genetically selecting meat chickens for rapid growth, the birds become so heavy that their legs are unable to support their body weight, thereby putting an unnecessary strain on their hearts and lungs. The same intensively farmed birds also frequently develop painful ammonia burns on their legs, feet or chests, because they are too weak to support their own, heavy bodies and are forced to lie on shed floors covered in bird droppings.
To be sure, this is something that animal protectionists get angry about, not least because the science is unequivocal about why such welfare problems occur, but that the farming industry seems loathe to do anything about it.
This has become painfully evident in the recent discussions surrounding an implementation report on on-farm animal welfare. The report, penned by a French cattle farmer from the Renew Europe group, was disproportionately concerned with extolling the virtues of farmers and protecting their interests, rather than the welfare of animals.
Although this own-initiative report, to be voted on at this week's Plenary session tomorrow, was patched up considerably through amendment, it still includes several glaring fallacious claims that show blatant disregard for animal welfare science.
It is nothing short of astonishing that a majority of AGRI MEPs supported an amendment implying that all’s fine with foie gras production. The amendment claims, for example, that the fattening process “respects the animals' biological parameters”. Yet it is an undisputed scientific fact that the force-feeding of ducks and geese leads to steatosis of the liver, which causes great suffering and makes it difficult for the birds to walk and breathe normally.
Likewise, AGRI members endorsed the statement that “no reliable solutions whatsoever have been found thus far for the problem of tail-biting in pigs”. This is patently untrue.
Tail-biting occurs in pigs when they do not have a suitable outlet for their natural instinct to investigate their surroundings. The industry solution has been to amputate (dock) piglets’ tails. This procedure is painful and complications can arise causing long-term pain. Understanding this, the Pigs Directive requires that farmers provide enrichment materials, such as straw, hay, or wood, as well as improve the pigs’ overall housing environment and the farm’s management systems.
Contrary to the AGRI report’s claim, Finland and Sweden have proved themselves perfectly capable of eliminating tail-docking as a routine practice. However, as DG SANTE audits have illustrated, in most other EU countries 98,5%–100% of pigs are still being tail-docked. This is an extraordinary marker of failure by the Member States and the pig sector to respect the law.
It is conspicuous by contrast that the Parliament’s ENVI committee consistently adopts progressive, balanced and science-based opinions when it comes to animal welfare issues. Their recent Opinion on on-farm welfare, which was largely ignored by their AGRI colleagues, provides a good case in point.
Once upon a time, ENVI was assigned as the lead committee to prepare the Parliament’s reports on animal welfare legislative initiatives, but during the sixth legislative term, and perhaps not by coincidence, AGRI’s powers and responsibilities were amended to include “animal husbandry and welfare.”
This has proved particularly problematic, not only since it meant that issues such as animal testing and even commercial seal slaughter, also ended up on their docket, but because there are so many documented conflicts of interest in AGRI due to many MEPs receiving income derived from farming.
The dramatic differences in approach between the two Parliamentary committees raises the question of whether the responsibility for decision-making on animal welfare matters should be shifted back to the ENVI committee, or at the very least joint competence given on these issues.
With the European Commission expected to deliver its legislative proposals to revise the existing animal welfare acquis, including ending caged confinement for farm animals by the end of 2023, there are serious questions to be asked about how and who should be deciding on animal welfare in the future.
If the EU truly wants to protect the welfare of chickens, then surely the European Parliament should not still be putting foxes in charge of the henhouse!
Dr. Joanna Swabe is senior director of public affairs for Humane Society International/Europe. She oversees the development and implementation of HSI’s animal welfare policies in the European Union and is responsible for coordinating the organisation’s relations with the European Commission, European Parliament and Council of the European Union. Her primary task is to encourage these EU institutions to achieve legislative change and to get a wide variety of animal protection issues on the agenda of EU policymakers. You can contact Dr. Swabe at: jswabe@hsi.org
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With a presence in more than 50 countries, Humane Society International works around the globe to promote the human-animal bond, rescue and protect dogs and cats, improve farm animal welfare, protect wildlife, promote animal-free testing and research, respond to natural disasters and confront cruelty to animals in all of its forms.Learn more about our work at hsi.org. Follow HSI on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
