Talking of the EU; please check out our recent post re foie gras production in the EU:

https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/12/11/eu-82-of-eu-citizens-think-that-farm-animals-should-be-better-protected-mr-junker-always-the-no-black-sheep/

EU to review animal welfare strategy

By Peter Teffer

Brussels, 14. Nov, 07:29

The European Commission is going to evaluate its animal welfare strategy, it has said in response to a report by the European Court of Auditors published on Wednesday (14 November).

The review of the strategy comes almost three years after the European Parliament asked for it.

The auditors said in their report that animal welfare in the EU has improved, but that member states were slow to implement recommendations from the commission.

One example of slow implementation was found in France.

In 2010, the EU commission had recommended that French inspectors use better equipment to check conditions of animals’ environment on farms and during transport.

According to French legal requirements already in place since 2000, inspectors were supposed to have specialised equipment to make measurements.

“The French authorities had not, however, procured all the required equipment by the time of our audit,” the auditors wrote.

“During our visit to a laying hens farm certified as free-range, where the presence of ammonia inside the building was evident, the French inspector did not have the necessary equipment to measure the level of gas concentration. The inspector noted in the inspection report that the related requirement had been met,” they added.

Following the auditors’ visit, French authorities told the EU commission in spring 2018 that they had bought measurement equipment.

“However, inspectors were only asked to use this on farms raising chickens for meat,” the report said.

Meanwhile, Romania had been told several times between 2009 and 2011 that it needed to have legal sanctions in place for those who broke EU animal welfare rules.

“At the time of our audit, the Romanian authorities had not yet approved the necessary changes in the legislation to apply such sanctions,” said the report.

Above – A Calf peers out of a veal crate which should have been banned in the EU 6 years earlier !!

A review, finally

The EU’s animal welfare strategy was published in 2012, and was specifically designed for the period 2012-2015.

However, some of the proposed measures were delayed until after 2015, and the commission has not published a new strategy paper since.

On 26 November 2015, the European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution urging the commission “to evaluate the existing strategy and to draw up a new and ambitious strategy for the protection and welfare of animals for the 2016-2020 period in order to build on the work of the previous strategy and ensure the continuation of a framework for delivering high animal welfare standards across the member states”.

In March 2016, a group of northern and western European ministers also called for new rules to improve animal welfare standards.

The European Court of Auditors said in a report out on Wednesday that the commission had not assessed if the strategy had achieved its goals.

“There are no baseline indicators or target indicators to measure how far the strategy objectives have been achieved and the commission had not yet evaluated the results of its actions as requested by the European parliament,” said the report.

In response, the commission acknowledged that, and said that it planned to perform an evaluation of the strategy.

“Its actions have not yet been evaluated since they were completed only by early 2018, and therefore, the impact of all actions has not yet materialised,” the commission said.

Improvements, but slowly

The report stated that there were “still some significant discrepancies between the animal welfare standards established in the EU legislation and the reality on the ground”.

They audited the situation in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Romania.

“The member states visited generally followed the European Commission’s recommendations, sometimes took a long time to address them,” auditor Janusz Wojchiechowski told journalists in a briefing on Tuesday.

He did not want to say whether the commission should introduce a new animal welfare strategy.

“This is not our role, to suggest or recommend to have a new strategy,” he noted.

The report stated that some of the measures announced in the 2012 strategy, like the publication of EU guidelines on the protection of animals during transport had been delayed by up to five years.

Below – Live exports of animals from the UK to France by Dutch convicted criminals !

Above – Germany – A piglet is castrated without any veterinary involvement or use of medication.

“The guidelines on pig welfare and on the protection of animals at slaughter were also delayed due to lengthy discussions with stakeholders,” the report said.

“Most reports were based on external studies, which were sometimes delayed due to lack of staff at the commission to manage the procurement process and review draft content,” it continued.

Further reading of our posts relating to EU lack of involvement for EU animal welfare issues:

https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/12/08/give-us-today-our-daily-meat/

https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/12/06/pissing-in-the-rain/

https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/12/01/hungary-eu-more-evidence-to-show-why-the-eu-cannot-enforce-its-own-legislation-regarding-animals-and-their-welfare/

https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/11/27/england-dutchman-onderwater-exports-scottish-calves-from-ramsgate-plus-more-info/

Junker – Mr all talk and do nothing.

Help consumers take cruelty away from EU’s Xmas buffet

By Michel Vandenbosch and Reineke Hameleers

BRUSSELS, 10. Dec, 15:02

Only five out of 28 EU member states continue to force-feed birds for the production of foie gras – a broadly-acknowledged cruel and inhumane practice.

An overwhelming majority of EU citizens expect the EU to offer better protection for farm animals and 23 EU countries no longer accept force-feeding.

On 26th November, 79 MEPs formally prompted the commission to take its responsibilities by engaging to take firm action on a topic so many EU citizens feel strongly about, and committing to a meeting with MEPs at short term.

In January such meeting was promised for “early this year”, but a date has never been fixed.

With Christmas approaching, retailers’ windows fill themselves with festive products including end-of-year high end ‘delicacies’ such as the fatty goose or duck liver foie gras.

Because of the tricky requirement of minimum liver weights introduced in EU legislation as recently as 1991 and contained in Regulation 543/2008, foie gras is systematically the result of ‘gavage’, or force-feeding.

This means producers force tubes down geese’s and duck’ throats and pump the birds’ stomachs with more grain over the course of a couple of weeks than they would normally eat in a lifetime.

Extrapolated to our own body, this would equate to the ingestion of 20kg of spaghetti every single day by a human being.

As a result, their liver pathologically grows up to 10 times bigger, with large deposits of fat.

Incapable of moving or even breathing normally, the animals face constant pain and infections loom.

It is therefore no surprise that 23 EU member states have already banned this practice, which they rightly consider as animal abuse.

The 2016 special Eurobarometer on animal welfare showed that 94 percent of EU citizens think protecting the welfare of farmed animals is important and 82 percent think they should be better protected by the EU than they are now.

Interestingly, alternatives exist and are widely embedded across the EU member states where the practice was banned.

But for such alternatives to really root in the market, we now need to see some legislative change, which is what 79 MEP’s formally called for at the end of November through a written question to Commissioners Hogan and Andriukaitis in the European Parliament.

It is not the first time MEPs call on the Commission to act on this issue, however this question exceeds all previous actions by the quantity of parliamentarians it rallied and feasibility of its simple call to action.

This written question was promoted by a diverse group of MEPs: Marlene Mizzi (S&D, MT), Sirpa Pietikäinen (EPP, FI), Mark Demesmaeker (ECR, BE), Petras Auštrevičius (ALDE, LT), Pascal Durand (Greens, FR), and Anja Hazekamp (GUE, NL).

The EU has uncontested animal welfare laws, such as directive 58/98, applying to farming practices stating among others that “No animal shall be provided with food or liquid in a manner, nor shall such food or liquid contain any substance, which may cause unnecessary suffering or injury.”

This clearly rules out the acceptability of forced feeding.

Nevertheless, in open contradiction with such requirements, regulation 543/2008 imposes minimum weights on the livers of ducks and geese, which can be reached only by force-feeding the birds, in order to be allowed to market such products as foie gras.

Today, only five EU countries continue to allow force-feeding in foie gras production, namely France, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain, and Belgium (Wallonia only).

79 Parliamentarians representing the seven main political groups and all 28 member states have demonstrated, in the second-most-signed parliamentary question of this term, that EU citizens no longer want pockets of tolerated animal cruelty to exist in the way farmed animals are reared for our food.

They have strongly made the case that the marketing regulation on foie gras is an unjustified barrier preventing products of higher morality to prosper and gradually allow consumers to create market opportunities for foie gras production without force-feeding, based on their preference and ethical values.

As long as the requirement of minimum liver weights is maintained, foie gras production is bound to produce huge animal suffering.

This is why, jointly with 79 MEPs, we call on commissioner Hogan and commissioner Andriukaitis, in reflection of today’s European public moral, article 13 TFEU and the will of the EU citizens, to support a simple, cost-free proposal – deleting the requirement of minimum liver weights contained in Regulation 543/2008 – that would empower consumers to drive change.

Michel Vandenbosch is president of Global Action in the Interest of Animals (GAIA) and Reineke Hameleers is director of Eurogroup for Animals

Disclaimer: This article is sponsored by a third party. All opinions in this article reflect the views of the author and not of EUobserver

Source – https://euobserver.com/stakeholders/143651 

WAV Comment

As we have often said and shown, the EU is NOT enforcing its own legislation.  

The ‘club’ that means nothing and wields no power.

Another reason why the UK wants to break free from this farce that is called the EU club – a club that wants to pretend that all is well whilst the animal abuse continues all day, every day.  People like Junker and Tusk should be ashamed of themselves; not place themselves on the high platforms that they do.

Mr Junker – Useless, like the rest of his club.

Published on 24 Jun 2011