Document type : article published in Reporterre
Author: Thomas Schnee
Preview: In Germany, a livestock farming commission has just dissolved itself, after failing in its attempts to improve farm animal living conditions.
Germany's new political season has a new hot topic: the condition of farm animals. Twenty million pigs, 11 million cows and 50 million chickens are involved - along with 82 million consumers. On August 22, the body tasked with working to improve livestock conditions since 2019 - the Livestock Competence Network, also known as the Borchert Commission - dropped a bombshell into the world of agri-food politics by announcing its dissolution after two years of unsuccessful attempts to implement its proposals.
" The political world had the opportunity to get involved in putting the transformation of farming conditions into practice. They didn't grasp it. This is nothing other than a political failure by the previous coalition and the current one", commented Jochen Bochert, Chairman of the committee and former Agriculture Minister under Helmut Kohl. This is a bitter setback, given that the country enshrined the defence of the "natural foundations of life and animals" in its constitution in 2002, and given the setbacks experienced by the German livestock industry. [...] What were the Borchert Commission's proposals, though? They called for the division of farming conditions into three levels to encourage more spacious facilities with"distraction" zones. Level 3, the highest, corresponded in part to the specifications for organic farming and for the Neuland network, with plenty of open-air space and, for example, grazing for cattle and poultry. The commission also wanted all livestock rearing to be carried out at least at Level 2 by 2040. Currently, three quarters of livestock in Germany are kept according to the legal minimum standard.
The Commission wanted to reduce the number of farm animals
The Borchert commission, composed of representatives from the agricultural and environmental worlds, has never concealed the fact that the proposed reforms would lead to a reduction in the number of farm animals in Germany. This requirement is considered by them to be essential in achieving a reduction of the pollution caused by the spreading of liquid manure on fields. The experts also believe that the implementation of these measures may be difficult for farmers, and should be subsidized by the state to the tune of 80-90%. The cost is estimated at 7 to 11 billion euros a year, and would be financed by a tax on food products.
And this is where the problem lies. At regional level, too, the Länder agriculture ministers are in conflict over funding sources and the size and type of farms to be supported. And no federal government in four years has been able to agree to make such a sum available or introduce a new tax. The current Minister of Agriculture, the ecologist Cem Özdemir, has only obtained just a billion euros - to "get started" - from his Finance-Ministry colleague, the Liberal, Christian Lindner.
In this land of abattoirs and factory farming, the disbanding of the Commission does not mean an end to efforts to improve animal welfare. But, as Olaf Bandt, President of the German branch of Friends of the Earth (Bund), and a Commission member: "it is regrettable that it has deprived itself of its possibilities of influence. For the consensus it had reached was invaluable".
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