Proposals until the autumn
Ministers of agriculture conference: farm animals, it should go better
The welfare of farm animals could make meat products more expensive. Photo: picture alliance / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Wedged in a dark, stuffy stables, on uncomfortable ground, and without a change – so the animals should have in life. However, stables rebuild is expensive. Where will the money come from for this?
Pigs, cows and other farm animals should get more space and employment opportunities – for election in the coming autumn, with concrete proposals on the table to in front of the Bundestag.
The agricultural Ministers of the 16 länder were in Berlin on Thursday agreed that the farmers should get for the necessary conversions of money and it needs an Instrument for financing – for example, a tax on meat and other animal products.
A feasibility study on the way, the results of which will introduce you in the spring, is now the Federal Minister of agriculture, Julia Klöckner (CDU) announced. Target of legislative proposals for short-, medium – and long-term reconstruction of the animal husbandry in this legislature are.
The 16 länder Ministers were unanimously in principle behind the recommendations of the so-called Borchert Commission. Experts, under the leadership of former Federal agriculture Minister, Jochen Borchert (CDU) had required an investment of 1.2 billion Euro per year, in the stables, determined to Finance as a “best solution” proposed to make animal products more expensive, such as a welfare tax called consumption tax. Were listed in the recommendations but there are also other possibilities, such as a higher VAT on animal products, or financing from General tax revenues.
The question was now whether there will be a compensation for increased costs for farmers, but how exactly it would be implemented, said the Saarland, environment and consumer protection Minister Reinhold Jost (SPD), had convened the special conference of agriculture Ministers on the subject of animal welfare.
Jochen Borchert himself had presented to the Ministers the proposals. “I think we are today took a major step forward,” he said afterwards. Hardly anyone believed half a year ago, “that we get in so quickly with such a wide Basis in the implementation”. The environmental protection organization Greenpeace has called the outcome of the conference was “absolutely clear”.
The expert Commission considers animal welfare levy to be particularly suitable, because they have a “climate and environmental policy goals, a moderate amount of steering effect” and the citizens will be charged “in proportion to their consumption of animal products”, as stated in the recommendations. 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. According to calculations by the Ministry of agriculture, therefore, each consumer per year would have to pay an average 35,02 EUR more.
The Bundestag asked the Federal government at the beginning of July by a large majority, yet until the election of 2021, a strategy for the fundamental restructuring of animal husbandry, with proposals for funding, to submit. The Corona cases in slaughterhouses had cheap brought meat, and the consequences even more pronounced in the focus.
Klöckner emphasized that there is meat in Germany is “usually cheap”. “An animal is slaughtered for this product. This is a junk product.” You’ll currently legally check how let prevent meat used as bait and offered at Dumping prices will.
Next week at a Meeting with EU Agriculture Ministers, it will go also to EU-wide animal welfare license plate, said Klöckner. Such a multi-stage animal welfare Label in Germany has already brought on the way, however, initially only for pigs, cattle and poultry to follow. The SPD is not satisfied: It will not agree to the draft in its current Form, said the animal welfare policy spokesperson of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Susanne lunch, the “New osnabrück newspaper”. “We need a mandatory animal welfare label on the packaging. And this must apply to all farm animals.”
