For decades animal protection and animal rights organisations have been arguing with representatives of politics and the animal industry about the abolition of gestation crates. Gestation crates are metal cages in which the mother pigs currently spend almost half their lives and cannot turn around.
A vote in the Federal Council on the amendment of the Ordinance on Animal Husbandry, including the regulations on gestation crates, was postponed several times.
But the meat industry is not willing to back down even a few centimetres, because for them the abolition of the gestation crates would mean additional expenditure and thus loss of profit. With their lobby organisations, they are putting pressure on the Ministry of Agriculture, and successfully so. Both the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and the Bundesrat’s Agricultural Committee want to keep the gestation crate system permanently (albeit reduced).
The animal protection NGO „Deutsche Tier-Lobby“, with a broad alliance of animal protection and animal rights organisations, is calling on the Bundesrat to vote on 15 May for the complete abolition of the gestation crate system.
The abolition of the gestation crate system can be a step in the right direction. But it must not stop there.
We call for the abolition of the animal industry as part of a comprehensive agricultural turnaround towards a solidarity-based and ecological production and organisation method that is not at the expense of other sentient individuals and is not profit-oriented.