Animal welfare organizations support the agricultural initiatives

Animal welfare organizations have the task of promoting animal welfare.

The upcoming initiatives have direct and indirect benefits for animals and are therefore actively supported by animal welfare organizations.

Although some progress has been made in recent years, there are still farms in Switzerland where animals are kept in large numbers under poor conditions and never see the light of day before slaughter.

Pesticides have direct and indirect negative effects on animal welfare, particularly for wildlife such as fish, birds, hedgehogs, and amphibians. Since these issues could not be discussed as part of the suspended agricultural policy AP22+, animal welfare organizations welcome the initiatives and call for concrete solutions to the animal welfare, pesticide, antibiotic, and nutrient problems, as well as existing enforcement issues.

The drinking water initiative works for the benefit of animals

Animal welfare instead of antibiotic misuse: Well-kept animals are the best prevention against disease and make prophylactic antibiotic use unnecessary. If prophylactic antibiotics are no longer permitted, agriculture will be compelled to improve husbandry conditions.

Poor management and bad husbandry conditions make animals sick. Prophylactic or regular antibiotic treatments become necessary to mask the animal-unfriendly living conditions.

The drinking water initiative promotes genuine prevention through appropriate management and good husbandry conditions, by removing subsidies for farms that use prophylactic or regular antibiotic treatments.

Example of veal farming:Cows must regularly give birth to calves in order to produce milk. When these young animals (known as “veal calves”) are purchased by calf fatteners, transported, and regrouped into new fattening groups, this causes stress. In addition, pathogens from various farms are brought together with the animals. This very often leads to illness, which is then in turn treated with antibiotics.

Examples like this show that antibiotic use becomes unnecessary when management practices are changed (e.g. raising calves on the home farm) or when barn conditions and hygiene are improved. The demand made by the Drinking Water Initiative — that farms still using antibiotics prophylactically after 8 years should no longer receive subsidies — is therefore self-evident and represents the bare minimum that can be required.

Animal-hostile factory farming and management practices that violate animal welfare standards will need to be replaced by species-appropriate forms of husbandry. This does not mean costly investments in elaborate barn systems; rather, simplification and a return to nature-based agriculture is the key to overcoming these problems.

Livestock numbers matched to the feed base prevent factory farming

The initiative demands that only farms which keep a livestock population that can in principle be fed using feed produced on the farm itself should receive subsidies (regional exchange remains possible).

Industrial livestock operations often use large quantities of imported feed, such as soy from Brazil, for which rainforest is cleared. In such operations, the personal bond between the animal keeper and the animal is absent, and the dignity of the animal is systematically violated by treating it as a mere unit of production. No more taxpayer money should be used to support such operations.

Family farms that act in accordance with animal welfare standards, keep animals in appropriate numbers, and for whom animal welfare is a priority can instead be better supported with the subsidies that are freed up. There is no reason to fear that livestock keepers will withdraw from existing animal welfare programmes.

Article 104a of the Federal Constitution allows the Confederation to introduce sustainability criteria for imports. This makes it possible to prevent imports that do not comply with our regulations.

Animal welfare organizations are therefore convinced that this initiative points the way toward livestock farming that respects animals, and that in the medium term it will strengthen farmers by ensuring that Swiss products exceed world market standards in every respect — and will thus find a place in our shopping baskets even as markets open up.

Pesticide Initiative: Environmental Protection Is Also Animal Protection

To approve pesticides, extremely burdensome animal experiments must be conducted to test their toxicity. The pesticides applied to fields — particularly insecticides — directly and indirectly harm animals living in those fields, but through runoff and drift they also affect animals in bodies of water, forests, and other habitats. Amphibians, hedgehogs, birds, and fish are among those that suffer especially under these toxic showers, as the animals they prey on are also severely decimated.

Yes to Sustainable and Animal-Friendly Agriculture

For the reasons stated above, animal welfare organizations recommend a Yes vote on both initiatives.

Animal welfare organizations call on all friends of animals to support both forward-looking initiatives and, on June 13, to cast a convinced 2x Yes to promote animal welfare in Switzerland — for the sake of animals and their own health.