German agri minister slammed for leaving livestock measures up to EU

Germany’s agriculture ministry is not doing enough to restructure animal husbandry and relies too much on possible EU-level steps, Socialist agriculture lawmakers wrote in a joint paper released Tuesday (31 January).

Read the original German article here.

Measures to give reliable financial and legal support to farmers in restructuring animal husbandry, making it more animal-friendly and less intensive, are currently at the heart of Germany’s agricultural policy debate.

The agriculture ministry, currently headed up by the Greens’ Cem Özdemir, has been facing criticism of its approach to this challenge by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), the larger party in the coalition.

Specifically, the Social Democrats take issue with what they perceive as complacency on Özdemir’s part, who they think is relying too much on potential action at the EU level rather than taking action in Germany to create planning security for farmers looking to upgrade their animal welfare standards.

“Farm managers facing decision-making situations are literally running out of time,” the paper, which was signed by the Social Democrats’ agriculture spokespeople in the national and regional parliaments, reads.

There is a “particular urgency in the preparation of mandatory animal welfare and origin labels”, according to the paper, which pushed back against the idea of waiting for EU proposals to be announced.

Last December, the Bundestag adopted Özdemir’s proposal for a compulsory animal welfare label on unprocessed pork, which the minister said will be extended to other meat types soon.

Like animal welfare labelling, however, the coalition agreement also stipulates a compulsory origin label for animal products, which should show which country a product comes from.

German animal welfare label risks distorting EU market, critics say

The German cabinet approved Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir’s bill for a mandatory animal welfare label on Wednesday (12 October), but the opposition and farming associations warn of inconsistencies within the EU single market.

Waiting for Brussels’ proposals

While this type of compulsory labelling is something Özdemir’s ministry expressly supports, it also believes that introducing a national law to that effect would be difficult under EU regulations due to the distortions this could create within the bloc’s internal market.

Özdemir has thus announced that he will first wait for the European Commission to present its proposals on EU-wide food labelling rules, stressing that he will lobby for those to include mandatory origin labelling requirements.

The Commission was supposed to present its proposals by the end of 2022, but they are now expected in the spring of this year.

This delay is “very regrettable”, Özdemir said at the fringes of an EU agriculture ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Monday (30 January).

“But I also want to put pressure now so that it finally comes,” he stressed.

In case of further delays, “we will not wait for Brussels to deliver”, but “do everything in our power nationally to close the gaps we have nationally”, he added. For example, his ministry is already preparing to extend origin labelling for loose, unpacked meat.

For some time now, the German Farmers’ Association (DBV) has also repeatedly called for the introduction of a compulsory animal welfare label to be accompanied by origin labelling, with a view to mitigating disadvantages for German farms on the EU market.

The SPD spokespersons on animal husbandry, meanwhile, also criticise the slow implementation of the recommendations of two expert commissions on the subject – the so-called Borchert Commission and the Future Commission on Agriculture, which had presented their recommendations in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

The ministry’s current handling of the proposals is “unsatisfactory and even disappointing”, the paper says.

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[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]

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