Call for tighter controls on zoo standards

Date: 21/12/1995

ANIMAL welfare lobbies are mounting a fresh campaign for EU action to improve standards in zoos across the Union.

Angered by the omission of promised plans for a 'recommendation' on zoo standards from the Commission's 1996 work programme, campaigners are also redoubling their efforts to ensure that animal welfare is firmly entrenched in the treaty after next year's Intergovernmental Conference (IGC).

Animal welfare groups are still hoping that the Commission's decision in October to abandon plans for a binding directive on zoo standards, in the interests of subsidiarity, could be overturned.

David Wilkins, of the Eurogroup for Animal Welfare, says such an important piece of work should not have been sacrificed to the drive for decentralisation.

“Even an inadequate directive can be built on and made stronger. But with a recommendation, if member states so choose, they can ignore it completely,” he points out.

Wilkins has not given up all hope of persuading Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard to breathe new life into the proposals, even though she was overruled by the rest of the Commission, who preferred a non-binding recommendation to a directive.

Campaigners are also hoping that the European Parliament will argue forcefully that a recommendation is useless and demand a directive. However, the Parliament's scope for overturning the Commission's will under the cooperation procedure is limited.

For Wilkins, this is especially ironic because “we have a rare situation where animal welfarists, the Parliament and zoo representative groups are actually in agreement that there should be a directive, but it's not being done for political reasons”.

In the meantime, many member states are showing no signs of putting an end to the “appalling” conditions which first encouraged the drive towards common standards.

“The problems have not disappeared at all, with appallingly low standards in several zoos. The summer is the worst time, when some of the southern member states open up special zoos just for the tourist season,” says Wilkins.

The Amsterdam-based European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) is confident that things are improving, but admits that the planned directive - into which it put a lot of work - would have helped matters considerably.

Standards of national legislation within the Union are very varied. Germany, Sweden and the UK are among the countries with the highest standards.

In Belgium and France, although zoos have to be officially registered, there are few conditions attached to the granting of a licence.

Officials at EAZA point to the “complexities and legal nightmare” of legislation throughout the EU. While tight standards exist for transporting farm animals and primates, there are still no basic rules in place for running zoos. “It's absolutely impossible to see through the different legislation or see how it all works,” commented an EAZA official.

Despite the failure to persuade the Commission of the need to rectify this, the welfare lobby still hopes to convince member states that a more explicit reference to animal welfare should be written into the revised treaty following the IGC.

Under the banner of “Pro Animal 96”, 19 welfare groups have drawn up proposals to have the welfare of animals named as one of the activities of the EU and to add a reference to welfare into the articles covering the Common Agricultural Policy.

A specific article covering animal welfare should also be written into the treaty, the group believes.

At the last IGC, a brief declaration on the protection of animals was written into the Final Act of the Maastricht Treaty.