Agricultural Initiatives: Taxpayers Subsidising Equestrian Sport

Recently, Beat Wampfler, Head of Veterinary Services at the Swiss Horse Centre Bern and President of the Horse Association, raised the alarm about the Drinking Water Initiative.

He claims it fundamentally calls into question the keeping of riding and hobby horses in Switzerland. This assertion is entirely without factual basis and is simply wrong.

Riding Horses Are Not Affected

The facts are: the Drinking Water Initiative redirects subsidies towards farms that feed their livestock with Swiss-grown feed. No longer subsidised will be industrial livestock farming that depends on imported feed and antibiotics, causing serious harm to our ecosystem and our health.

Riding and hobby horses are not agricultural livestock and are therefore in no way affected by the Drinking Water Initiative. It is completely fabricated when Dr Wampfler claims that “with the adoption of this initiative, our horses would henceforth only be allowed to eat what grows in the fields of the farm.” The initiative contains no provisions regarding the feeding of riding and hobby horses, nor regarding the import of specialist feed from abroad.

Proponents of the Drinking Water Initiative

Agricultural Lobby Stirs Up Opinion with Misinformation

Here, an influential association president and agricultural lobbyist is shamelessly stirring up sentiment against the popular initiative using entirely fabricated facts. He ventures onto very thin ice with the claim that the Drinking Water Initiative makes “our already expensive hobby” even more costly, because it would strip farmers of subsidies for livery places.

In doing so, Dr Wampfler inadvertently shines a spotlight on yet another outrage of our out-of-control subsidy system.Few people know that farms receive substantial direct payments for boarding places, almost as much per horse as for a cow, even though no food production takes place. Taxpayers are unlikely to have much sympathy for the idea that their tax money is being used to subsidize private horse keeping.

From various pieces of misinformation, Dr. Wampfler constructs the bogeyman that “horses are increasingly being pushed out of the agricultural zone”. It is therefore urgently necessary to vote no on the drinking water initiative, he argues.

Sustainable agriculture is also in the interest of horses

The drinking water initiative advocates for sustainable food production without pesticides and for land-based animal husbandry. It is certainly also in the interests of horses if they can live on farms without artificially inflated livestock numbers and harmful emissions, and graze on meadows that have not been treated with excess, antibiotic-laden slurry. More on the connections between environment and nature conservation.