By Gunnar Schupelius
The government takes care of animal welfare and consumer protection, but not the interests of pig farmers. This is a serious mistake, says Gunnar Schupelius.
In Germany, a new law on the labeling of pork comes into force. The Federal Council gave the green light for this on Friday. In the future, there will be five different labels on the packaging that indicate the type of husbandry: “Barn”, “Barn+place”, “Fresh-air stable”, “Outrun/Pasture” and “Organic”.
This is intended to give consumers better information about how the pigs whose meat is in the refrigerated section were kept. That makes sense: If animal welfare is important to you, you can influence how the animals are kept through your purchasing decision.
You can see: The government takes care of animal welfare and consumer protection. However, it does not represent the interests of the pig farmers. On the contrary: the farmers are constantly being burdened with new regulations, making the farm unprofitable.
In Brandenburg, the number of pigs has fallen by 30 (!) percent from 751,722 to 524,000 animals in the last five years. It is a downward movement that cannot be stopped. Word has also gotten around among the youngsters. The Brandenburg State Farmers’ Association reports that trainees in animal husbandry only decide to keep cattle or poultry.
African swine fever acted as an intensifier of the crisis. This is how the farmer Karsten Ilse from Letschin (Märkisch Oderland), who gave up his pig farm in April 2021, described it. Animal husbandry in Germany was “no longer wanted by certain political forces,” he claimed. The pig farmers would be harassed with ever new regulations.
That’s how it stayed, as confirmed by all affected farmers. Two examples: The exhaust air from a pigsty must no longer contain any odour. It has to be pressed and washed through filter systems and a wall of water. Thats expensive.
The “fresh air barn”, in which the animals should have it better, is not allowed near towns for the same reasons, but also not near nature reserves, i.e. almost nowhere.
Secondly, manure pits used to consist of an open tank from which the liquid was taken and placed on the field. Today they are complicated systems that make it look like the manure is toxic waste and not a fertilizer.
The farmers state that they are more and more in the red with pigs. The slaughterhouses are in the hands of monopolists who mercilessly suppress the price.
If this continues, there will be no more pig farming here. Meat is then imported from abroad, for example from South America, which is produced under much worse conditions than in Germany.
The Green Ministers Axel Vogel (Brandenburg) and Cem Özdemir (Federal Government) turn a blind eye to this.
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