Document type : article published in Le Monde (subscriber edition)
Author: Mathilde Gérard
Preview: In a review to prepare for proposed legislation expected at the end of 2023, the EU executive has determined that EU rules are not in keeping with scientific knowledge or public expectations.
European animal welfare rules are outdated. They "do not reflect scientific and technological knowledge, societal expectations or sustainability challenges such as global warming, food safety and threats to human health." This harsh opinion was not issued by an NGO but by the European Commission, which on Tuesday, October 4, published a comprehensive assessment of all the directives in the European Union pertaining to the protection of animals. As part of the "Farm to Fork" (F2F) strategy, the agricultural and food roadmap that lays out the objectives of the Green Deal, the Commission has committed to evaluating and revising its regulations, most of which date back to the mid-1990s. The main objective of the review is to examine the relevance and effectiveness of the current rules, which are composed of seven directives and regulations, including directives on pigs and laying hens and regulation concerning animal transport.
The first observation made by the Commission, is that legislation has made it possible to improve animal health and welfare (for example, the proportion of laying hens raised in "alternative" systems has risen by 93% since 1996, and animal mortality during transport declined sharply after 2005) and to harmonize the rules among Member States, but there has been insufficient progress and they are no longer in keeping with scientific knowledge on what animals feel. For laying hens, for example, the "furnished" cages that have replaced standard cages offer only a minimal improvement in living conditions. In many regards, the legislation lags particularly far behind, on the the treatment of fish for example, for which the rules concerning slaughter fail to take account of the fact that they are recognised as sentient beings. [end of text available to non-subscribers]
