Animal dignity and hunting: What the Swiss Constitution says

Art. 120 of the Federal Constitution, the Animal Welfare Act, and the legal reality of recreational hunting.

Editorial team Wild beim Wild — 13 April 2026

With Art. 120 para. 2 of the Federal Constitution, Switzerland is the only country in the world to have enshrined the “dignity of living beings” as a constitutional principle — yet in the practice of recreational hunting, this intrinsic value of animals is systematically disregarded: animals are deliberately killed for leisure purposes without any serious weighing of interests taking place.

The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) gives concrete form to this protection and applies to wild animals as well. In the practice of recreational hunting, however, animal dignity is violated through botched shots, tracking of wounded animals, driven hunts, the laying out of kills, and the public display of slaughtered animals.

What “dignity of living beings” means in legal terms

The “dignity of living beings” under Art. 120 para. 2 of the Federal Constitution is not a declaratory statement of intent, but a legally binding constitutional principle. The AWA elaborates on it in Art. 1 and Art. 3: dignity means respecting the intrinsic value of the animal. The AWA explicitly prohibits any impairment of an animal’s appearance or dignity, as well as excessive instrumentalisation. Violations of Art. 3 lit. a AWA may be punished under Art. 26 para. 1 lit. a AWA with a custodial sentence of up to three years or a fine.

Art. 641a of the Civil Code has established since 2003 that animals are not objects. This legal reclassification has consequences for how they are treated, including wild animals. The Dossier on Hunting and Animal Welfare shows that both principles conflict with a system that kills animals for recreational purposes, even where alternatives have been documented.

The exception that breaks the rule

Animal welfare law stipulates in Art. 178 para. 1 of the Animal Welfare Ordinance (AWO) that vertebrates may only be killed under anaesthesia, except in emergencies. This rule applies strictly to the slaughter industry. However, an explicit exemption exists for recreational hunters under Art. 178a para. 1 lit. a AWO: they are exempt from the requirement to stun animals prior to killing.

The Dossier «Why animal welfare law ends at the forest’s edge» notes that wild animals in recreational hunting are legally worse off than farm animals such as cattle, chickens, or even lobsters and crabs, which have also been subject to mandatory stunning requirements since the revision of the Animal Protection Ordinance on 1 March 2018. An animal loses its legal protection the moment a hobby hunter loads the magazine.

Missed shots: Systematic suffering, not isolated cases

Between 2012 and 2016, 3,836 out of 56,403 animals shot in the canton of Graubünden were initially only wounded. Wildlife biologist Lukas Walser confirmed to SRF that this proportion is similar every year, pointing to several hundred animals being merely wounded per year in a single canton. The Foundation for the Animal in Law (TIR) estimates 3,000 to 4,000 head of escaping game annually across Switzerland.

The success rate of tracking searches — i.e. searching for wounded animals with the help of dogs — ranges between 35 and 65 percent depending on the canton. This means that up to half of all wounded animals die without being put out of their misery, often over hours or days. In an official survey (2014), 334 dead wild animals with gunshot wounds were found that fell outside regular culling plans, including 191 roe deer and 30 red deer. This is, as the Dossier on Hunting and Animal Welfare notes, “the tip of the iceberg.”

Stress as avoidable suffering

Even an instantly lethal shot is rarely preceded by the peaceful calm one might imagine. Hunting pressure triggers a cortisol cascade: elevated heart rate, accelerated breathing, energy expenditure. Studies from Scotland and Scandinavia show significantly higher cortisol levels in hunted red deer populations compared to unhunted ones. This stress impairs milk production, disrupts mother–offspring bonds, and weakens the immune system.

The Animal Protection Act explicitly defines welfare as freedom from pain, fear, and stress, as well as the opportunity to engage in species-typical behaviour. Hunting pressure systematically violates all of these criteria. This is not a consequence of individual misconduct, but a structural characteristic of recreational hunting.

Driven hunts: The most animal welfare-incompatible form of hunting

Driven hunts, particularly battue and drive hunts, cause the highest levels of stress in wild animals. Multiple shooters fire simultaneously at fleeing animals; hit rates are lower and the rate of missed or wounding shots is higher. The Dossier on Hunting and Animal Welfare notes that driven hunts explicitly contradict the stress-free principle of the Animal Welfare Act. Despite this, they are legal and widespread.

Laying out the bag: Death as spectacle

At the end of hunting days or hunting events, the killed animals are laid out in a display: the carcasses are arranged in a geometric formation and presented to the public, hunting horns are blown, and photographs are taken. The dossier «Hobby Hunting as an Event» documents how such displays take place at trophy shows, fur markets, and hunting fairs outside of the hunting season as well.

Legal scholarship — notably Bolliger/Rüttimann — argues that the dignity of an animal continues after death, analogous to human dignity. In 1989, the Federal Council established that comprehensive protection of life is necessary. The dossier on hunter’s trophy photos analyses this question from a legal and ethical perspective and shows that in such images the animal is reduced to a prop for ego, trophy, and the performance of masculinity — a matter that directly concerns Art. 3 lit. a of the Animal Welfare Act.

The dignity of social structure

Animal dignity is not limited to the individual. When a lead animal — a hind, a wild sow, a lead wolf — is shot, the young often die as well: because they do not know the food sources, the territory, or the learned avoidance strategies. Swiss wolf policy in 2025/2026 allowed young wolves to be killed as part of a «basic regulation» measure — one which, in the assessment of wildlife researchers, does not reduce conflicts but prolongs them.

The killing of lead animals and formative individuals violates not only the dignity of the individual animal, but also the social integrity of entire family groups. A rights interpretation guided by animal dignity would need to incorporate this dimension.

Geneva as a benchmark

The canton of Geneva has had no hobby hunting since 1974. Wild animals are managed exclusively by state-employed wildlife wardens. The dossier «Putting an End to Recreational Violence Against Animals» draws from this the conclusion that the argument of «necessary regulation» through hobby hunting has been empirically refuted.

Conclusion

Switzerland has the strongest legal anchoring of animal dignity in the world, and at the same time a hunting system that structurally disregards this dignity. The exemption from stunning requirements for hobby hunters, the lack of recording of misshots, the legal driven hunts, and the public display of killed animals stand in a contradiction to Art. 120 FC and the APA that is virtually impossible to resolve. This contradiction is politically intended, not legally inevitable, and therefore subject to change.

Sources

Art. 120 para. 2 FC (dignity of the creature), popular referendum of 17 May 1992
Art. 1, 3 lit. a, 26 para. 1 lit. a APA (Animal Protection Act, SR 455)
Art. 641a CC (animals are not objects, in force since 1 April 2003)
Art. 178, 178a APO (stunning requirement and exceptions)
APO revision of 10 January 2018, in force since 1 March 2018 (stunning requirement for crustaceans)
Canton of Graubünden: hunting statistics 2012–2016, misshots (SRF report, Lukas Walser)
Foundation for the Animal in Law (TIR): estimate of wounded game that escaped
Bolliger/Rüttimann: Legal protection of animal dignity, Zurich/Basel/Geneva 2015
Canton of Geneva: hunting ban since 1974, Loi sur la faune