Why compassion must be made part of the Union’s animal husbandry

Date: 09/01/03

By David Cronin

The Greeks are under pressure to improve the treatment of their livestock, but the EU presidency holders are not the only culprits.

A KNIFE is dragged across the throat of a fully conscious goat. Then the animal is left to bleed to death.

Sorry if this image puts you off your dinner. It is contained in a new film, shot secretly, about Greek slaughterhouses, launched today (9 January) by Compassion in World Farming (CIWF).

The campaign group has produced video evidence depicting how goats are killed without being stunned beforehand. Similar material has been gathered about sheep - it shows that electric stunners are applied to the animals for too short a time. As a result, many of the sheep regain consciousness before their throats are slit. Some try in vain to break free as they are hung upside down for their final living moments.

These practices show that the oldest piece of EU-wide legislation on animal welfare is being flouted. A 1974 directive, requiring that animals be stunned before slaughter, represented the first foray which the Council of Ministers took towards protecting creatures who'll never be able to vote.

CIWF has now decided to turn the spotlight on the shabby treatment of animals in some Greek abattoirs - just as the country takes over the Union's rotating presidency. It contends that the Greek authorities have failed to improve conditions in their slaughterhouses since being heavily criticised by a 2001 report from the European Commission.

"For Greece to take on the presidency of the EU, when it so blatantly ignores EU legislation, is a travesty," said Peter Stevenson, CIWF's political director. "Urgent action is needed to halt the pain, misery and fear commonly experienced by animals in Greek slaughterhouses."

David Byrne, the EU commissioner in charge of animal welfare, recently contended that directives which are not enforced are not worth the paper they are written on. "Legislation, on its own, is largely meaningless if the time, effort and resources are not invested in its implementation," he told the Union's farm ministers shortly before Christmas. "This is as true for animal welfare legislation as it is for other areas of both EU and national legislation."

Efforts to ensure that rules are respected can become lost in the EU's labyrinthine procedures.

While enforcing EU laws is a matter for national authorities, the Commission can take legal action against countries which are found wanting. It has set in train legal action against Spain and Greece, for example, over another key EU law in this field, covering the transport of live animals. Yet EU officials complain that these proceedings, which may ultimately lead to a verdict in the European Court of Justice, can undergo journeys more tortuous than those to which the hapless animals are subjected.

The Eurogroup for Animal Welfare, which bands together anti-cruelty groups from across the Union, has started a major campaign over the live transport issue. It contends that not only are existing rules being broken, they are inadequate to prevent suffering.

The campaigners want an eight-hour journey limit placed on all lorries carrying animals. Under an existing EU law, journey times may range from 19 hours (with a one-hour break) for baby animals, still drinking milk, to 29 hours (again with a one-hour break) for cattle, goats and sheep. Yet, as European Voice has reported, several studies have been published in recent months to suggest these restrictions are often ignored - in one case a consignment of pigs was kept in a truck for 90 hours during a trek between the Netherlands and Greece.

The Commission had indicated it would propose revised rules on the matter by the end of 2002 but these did not materialise. Instead, it invited contributions from interested parties on animal welfare issues in the last few months of last year - this public consultation process attracted some 3,700 emails. Spokeswoman Beate Gminder said these are currently being analysed and a new proposal should be published soon after the review is completed within the next three months.

Byrne is anxious to present a proposal which will be capable of winning sufficient support from the Council of Ministers to come into effect. While eight of the EU-15 have indicated they would be willing to support an eight-hour threshold on live transports, four others - Spain, Italy, France and Ireland - appear implacably opposed to the idea, with Portugal also harbouring strong reservations. "He [Byrne] has said on numerous occasions that there are lots of diverging views," said Gminder. "He will work to have more bridging of the gap between the various sides as he wishes to get the proposal adopted."

Byrne also feels the journey time issue is just one of many which need to be addressed - including the quality of vehicles used, the training of drivers and whether or not animals have sufficient space, water and food. "A journey can be very unpleasant, even if it is only two hours long," added Gminder.

In this increasingly globalised world, one constant risk the EU faces in trying to bolster its anti-cruelty policies is the potential that its laws will clash with or be negated by accords governing international trade.

Take this example. Due to an EU law, all egg cartons in its member states will have to carry special labels from January 2004, stating explicitly whether they were laid by free range hens, those kept in barns or by birds in battery cages. Yet this will only apply to eggs produced within the EU - subjecting imports to the same conditions would almost certainly lead to complaints being lodged in the World Trade Organization (WTO) by non-EU countries.

While the level of eggs imported into the Union is currently low, one concern being expressed by both farmers and animal rights activists is that this would rise sharply once a ban on the current battery cage system comes into effect. In 1999 EU governments agreed that the current 450 square centimetre cages commonly used in the Union would be eliminated by 2013.

Britain's Royal Society for the Prsevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) has calculated the ban could cause a 16% increase in the cost of egg production. Concerns are, therefore, being voiced about producers in countries still using such cases being able to sell eggs they export to the EU at considerably lower prices than those laid within the Union.

The Committee of Agricultural Organisations in the European Union (COPA) has called for EU standards to be imposed on imports so that farmers within the Union are not put at a competitive disadvantage.

In response to this and other pleas, the Commission has tabled a paper to the WTO, advocating that animal welfare concerns should be addressed during the current round of world trade talks. But Beate Gminder acknowledged that the EU executive faces an "uphill struggle" in convincing the wider world to place such sensitive topics on the agenda.

Another Commission paper, published in November last year, bluntly remarked that animal welfare is "not currently recognised as a legitimate concern" by the WTO. The paper contends that waging a pro-animal struggle in such an international forum is necessary both for ethical reasons and "in recognition of the higher costs that EU standards entail for both our producers and consumers."

Work on drawing up international rules on animal welfare is only at an embryonic stage. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) has done much work on the links between veterinary issues and international trade since it was founded in 1924. Yet, although it has made some recommendations on animal transports, it is only beginning to grapple with wider animal welfare concerns.

A special OIE working group on animal welfare experts met for the first time in April last.

The European Commission is trying to encourage this body to devote greater attention to welfare. It feels the fact that a respected "science-based" organisation is dealing with the issue would have a knock-on effect, perhaps helping convince the wider world that welfare considerations should not be regarded as barriers to trade.

Moreover, the Commission is keen to examine how the principle of treating animals humanely can be incorporated into its dealings with outside countries or regions. An EU agreement on developing closer links with Chile - signed in 2002 - set itself the aim of reaching a "common understanding" on animal welfare standards. One idea mooted by EU officials would be to try to have similar provisions inserted in accords with other South American states.

The Commission is toying too with the notion of concluding agreements with third countries about the production of certain foodstuffs, such as the aforementioned eggs. Yet one fear voiced by EU insiders is that such deals could lead to a diminution of standards set in the EU - as happened due to agreements with Canada and Russia on the trapping of animals for fur.

Meanwhile, MEPs are next week expected to rubber-stamp an agreement on reducing the testing of make-up on animals. The deal was thrashed out in November - despite entrenched opposition from France and Britain - after marathon "conciliation" talks between representatives of the three main EU institutions, the Parliament, Commission and Council of Ministers.

Under the regulations, new cosmetic products may not be tested on animals - to check if they have side-effects or cause allergies - if alternative methods for monitoring their safety become available within six years.

Nevertheless, animal welfare advocates are angered at how the agreement will allow exemptions for three of the 14 tests currently used. These would be able to continue until at least 2013 (and possibly longer if an extension is sought).

These involve feeding animals ingredients to check on their toxicity and the effects on reproductive systems. According to the RSPCA, they are the tests which inflict the most pain on laboratory animals.

But Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, the German Socialist deputy who acted as the European Parliament's top negotiator in the conciliation talks, brushes aside such criticism: "Anyone who thought we got a bad result should then say what the alternative would be and who could produce a better result. Whoever says something else either does not understand the questions properly or is demagogic."

While non-human animals are due to be a somewhat peripheral concern for the work of the Convention on the future of the EU, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and his team will still have to pore over suggestions about protecting them.

Several anti-cruelty groups are drafting proposals about how the EU constitution which the Convention is due to draft can embrace animals.

These are likely to examine whether the legally-binding protocol attached to the Amsterdam Treaty on animal welfare could be improved. It says that the Union "shall pay full regard to the welfare requirement of animals" in devising and implementing policies on agriculture, transport, the internal market and research. But there is a crucial qualification - under the protocol, the EU has committed itself to respect customs and laws applying in its member states relating to how animals are used in "religious rites" and "cultural traditions".

While those terms are open to interpretation, they conceivably allow EU law-makers to turn a blind eye to such verifiably cruel practices as "blood fiestas" in Spain - including bull-fighting and festivals in which birds are decapitated - or fox-hunting in many countries.

The Eurogroup for Animal Welfare has questioned how seriously the protocol has been taken. "It is worrying that there does not seem to be a mechanism to ensure that the provisions of the protocol are applied," said the Eurogroup's Sonja Van Tichelen. "Who is making the assessment on new proposals on whether or not "full regard is paid to the welfare of animals'? We have never received a clear reply on this."

Major feature on animal welfare.