Linking welfare to policies

Date: 10/10/1996

THERE can surely be no better way for a lobby group to ensure its voice is heard in the Union's institutions than to be led by a man with years of experience at the heart of the system.

Persuading Stanley Johnson to become European head of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) was quite a coup for the organisation.

For Johnson's career had already taken in the World Bank, two spells in the European Commission, a term as an MEP and two frustrating years at the United Nations attempting to drum up support for an ill-fated convention to protect the world's forests.

Having spent much of his working life banging the environmental drum, Johnson believes results can be achieved by convincing people of the crucial links between welfare issues and other policies.

“You just have to look at the BSE issue to see how closely welfare considerations are linked with economic ones. If all those cows had been safely grazing on rain-fed sunlit uplands, BSE may not have happened,” he argues.

The same is true, he says, of the poultry sector, where salmonella is far more pronounced among battery hens than free-range. “It is not just a matter of fringe sentimentality, but of real producer and consumer concern, with enormous implications.”

As one of the very first intake of British officials who came to Brussels in 1973, Johnson learnt the value of persuading colleagues in other departments to support policies coming out of what was then a very small environmental service.

Those lessons apply as much today as they did then. “If welfare is to be an integral part of what the institutions are about, it beholds every directorate-general to do what it can. The name of the game will be integrating welfare into the policies of other DGs,” he maintains.

As a former insider, Johnson is acutely aware of the potential power the Commission still has, but also recognises the danger of inertia within the institution.

And despite having kind words for controversial Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard, he has less faith in the attitude of her staff in DGXI, believing they have failed to recognise the link between animal welfare and the environment.

In Johnson's eyes, the decision not to push ahead with a binding directive on minimum standards for zoos is symptomatic of this incomprehension. “Of course there are links between welfare and general conservation. Animals die in zoos, so zoos need more animals from the wild,” he points out.

The current inertia contrasts very markedly with Johnson's “six glorious years” in DGXI under the then Director-General Laurens Brinkhorst. “Glorious because in those days you had a sense of the Commission's ability to really drive issues forward, so you could get up in the morning and say 'we must have a habitats directive',” he explains.

Johnson looks with satisfaction at the period between 1984 and 1990 when, under Commissioners Stanley Clinton Davis and Carlo Ripa di Meana, significant legislation emerged on animal experiments, ivory, the preservation of habitats, leghold traps and zoos.

These days, says Johnson, it is Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler and his officials in DGVI who are taking the lead on animal welfare questions.

“One of the things which has impressed me most is Fischler's dedication to the cause of animal welfare. The proposals which emerge from the Commission are better than the legislation which comes out of the Council, as we have seen in the case of animal transport and as I am afraid we will see with the veal calf directive,” he says.

It is, he believes, no great surprise that it is Austria - Fischler's home country - which has joined the UK in calling for the incorporation of a specific provision on animal welfare into the revised EU treaty.

“The BSE business has weakened the UK's bargaining hand as well as Britain's general attitude vis-à-vis Europe, so I am particularly pleased that this is not just a UK proposal, but now has the support of Austria, Sweden and the German Länder,” he says.

Having been within the system for so long, Johnson is also fully aware of the downside of EU-wide regulations, “which mean that member states which wish to go further are told they cannot”.

Alongside sister organisations, IFAW has dragged the UK before the courts, arguing it had the perfect right to ban the export of calves to the continent for the veal trade.

Johnson believes the UK case is typical of a situation where world trade rules take precedence over everything else.

“It is ludicrous to look on GATT as the supreme legal brick in a building of legal bricks. The GATT treaty is no more important than multilateral environmental treaties. The way people go on about GATT, they make it sound like the Holy Grail,” he says scathingly. “I do not see this as disguised protectionism. The World Trade Organisation has to make huge efforts to recognise that where health and the environment are concerned, it will sometimes justify or even necessitate the imposition of unilateral trade measures.”

IFAW and its partners are planning a major push to promote the idea of an international convention for the protection of animals, and are looking for support from a number of governments and the Commission.

It is hoped that a meeting in Paris on 5-6 November will provide the necessary impetus to build on a draft convention originally drawn up in 1988.

In the meantime, Johnson sees the Commission's ongoing efforts to secure a quadrilateral deal on humane trapping standards as the embryo of a future treaty.

“Many treaties have begun as self-standing exercises. As far as we can reach international standards, let's have a go,” he says, adding: “The leghold trap issue is deeply unfortunate. It could not have been clearer that the Commission had a duty to adopt the regulation. The Commission fell down on that in a big way.”

Johnson is also “deeply disappointed” that Parliament President Klaus Hänsch chose not to give the Commission a “bloody nose” by taking the executive to court over its failure to enact the ban at the start of this year.

But for all his determination, Johnson is no starry-eyed idealist. “Having been a politician and civil servant, it is jolly nice to be in the non-governmental organisation (NGO) community. You have to realise that NGOs are very much fighting for their place in the sun, but they can be jolly effective and important,” he says.

He is also sceptical about recent Commission moves to increase consultation with environmental lobbies. “This is probably more a matter of avoiding too much nuisance from them, rather than a deliberate belief that NGOs have a lot to contribute to the Commission's deliberations,” he maintains.

But Johnson believes that campaigns from outside can bring results, recalling the efforts which went into getting agreement on the 1983 seals directive. “Unusually, ministers realised they were doing something that people were interested in.”

But he cautions against a belief that this can always be the way, saying: “One cannot just respond to public pressure. If we made laws purely on the basis of who made the most noise, we would not have decent legislation.”

Apparently possessing limitless energy, Johnson is conscious of the importance of maintaining outside interests, and is hopeful that his novel The Commissioner will finally be turned into a film in the near future.

“Unless you manage to build in another side to your life when you are an environmentalist, people will rapidly retreat when they see you coming. People do not want to have this kind of thing rammed down their throats all the time. We all have to drive cars, eat meat, and engage in conspicuous over-consumption,” he insists.

In mitigation for this unfashionable view, Johnson points to the credit he has built up by virtue of the environmental laws which came out of the institutions during his tour of duty.

But the task is by no means complete.

“Where animal welfare is concerned, we are now about where we were 20 years ago with environmental policy. We are about 50 years behind as far as international animal welfare is concerned,” concludes Johnson.

Individual battles may be won, but the war is far from over.