Animal welfare delivery
Better Livestock Farming? 35 Euro per year for each
Better and animal-friendly husbandry conditions do not have to be expensive, calculated a Commission of experts. Photo: Danny Gohlke/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Would pay every citizen in the year 35 euros more for milk, meat and eggs, allowed themselves to be cows, cattle and chickens under better conditions. But the money is in the stable also?
More space in the pigsty, more comfortable floor coverings for dairy cows: to co-Finance To better conditions in agriculture, would have to pay each consumer of a new calculation according to per year on average 35,02 EUR more for animal products.
So much of an expert Commission recommended a so-called animal could cost tax of the average citizen.
The answer of the Federal Ministry for economic Affairs, on a request of the FDP parliamentary group, which is present the German press Agency. If the recommendation were to be implemented, accounted for, therefore, 23,80 euros to meat, to 4.72 euros on eggs and 6.50 euros in the milk and milk products. Previously, the newspaper “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung had reported” about the answer.
For the calculation, the Ministry has used the average consumption of the German citizens. The goods, according to the Federal Agency for agriculture and nutrition (BLE) in the past year per Person with 59.5 kilos of meat, 118,2 pounds of milk and 236 eggs.
In February a Commission was presented under the leadership of the former agriculture Minister, Jochen Borchert recommendations to Fund improvements in animal husbandry. You proposed a tax on animal products, which would be implemented as a consumption tax.
Conceivable premiums of 40 cents per kilogram of meat and sausage, 2 cents per kilogram for milk and fresh dairy products and 15 cents per Kilo for cheese, Butter and milk powder would be. After numerous Corona infections in the slaughtering industry, meat prices were low again in the criticism, and it came out in June, once again, movement in the discussion of the welfare levy.
In the recommendations, the experts criticized mid-February, among other things, to a little place in the stable, the sometimes painful procedures, such as the Shortening of the beaks of laying hens and the high level of performance, about as much milk per cow. To improve this, and other, amounts of the funding requirements in the initial phase to about 1.2 billion euros per year. The could at least speak to Finance part of the consumer, because: “For the collection of taxes/levies on animal products that a climate – and environmental results desired by politicians, moderate steering effect, and that citizens are proportionally charged to your consumption of animal products.”
And the most of the consumers want as well as the consumer informs the Central Federal Association (vzbv), relying on surveys. Prices would have to reflect what the production is about of meat cost under fair conditions, said vzbv chief Klaus Müller on Monday. “35 Euro will not allow immediately an optimal animal husbandry. Higher animal welfare standards will be reflected in a higher meat price, and conversely, higher Standards to justify a higher financial burden for consumers,” said Müller. Flanked this needs to be a “honest, reliable, and understandable animal welfare labelling, as well as with a compensation for households with low income”.
The Federal Minister of agriculture, Julia Klöckner (CDU) had in June – as the Corona of a crisis in the slaughterhouses arrived – for the Commission’s recommended animal welfare levy. The concept got at the beginning of July, the further back the wind: The Bundestag called on the Federal government with a large majority, yet until the election of 2021, a strategy for the fundamental restructuring of animal husbandry, with proposals for funding, to submit.
Criticism comes from the FDP, aimed already in your inquiry reinforced the fact that the term levy is actually a tax hide. The Deputy FDP parliamentary group Chairman Frank Sitta criticized on Monday, Klöckner not to run around “consumers and the General Public for much longer and the projects continue only as a “tax” verklausulieren”.
In its response, the agriculture Ministry stated that the term levy was a generic term that includes, among the taxes, fees, contributions and special levies fell. It’s a little wider bulky: “Whether and how this term is adapted, will be considered in the Wake of the results of the examination of financing options, taking into account the aspect of the perception in the population in depth.”
Sitta compares the welfare levy, the EEG levy, the renewable power plants will be promoted and the consumers pay the electricity bill. “In the case of the EEG levy, which should also serve a noble target, however, was from the initial ball of ice cream also with an entire ice cream truck,” said Sitta. “It is not clear that the money from a meat-focused tax at all objective in the case of the farmers in the barn will arrive, but in the state budget to be drained.” Therefore, a child better than an increase in the EU-wide animal welfare standards and market-based approaches to achieve.
