Spreitenbach Hunting Fair: The canton responds, the municipality stays silent

In a letter dated 19 May 2026, the Veterinary Service of the Canton of Aargau responded to the request for information from IG Wild beim Wild.

The letter is soberly worded, yet its content is clear. It confirms what we have been criticising for months, and it exposes a discrepancy that lies at the heart of this case.

The canton responds, the municipality stays silent

The responsible cantonal specialist office has reacted. Deputy cantonal veterinarian Melanie Kocher answers seven questions and grants part of our request for access to the files. One may argue about the content, but the Veterinary Service has faced the matter.

The municipality of Spreitenbach has not done so. We addressed three letters to the municipal council. To this day, no answer has come. Anyone who reports 850 voluntary protest emails as a punishable misuse of a telecommunications installation, yet fails to respond to direct questions from the reported platform, sends an unmistakable message about their priorities. How a conflict over animal welfare turned into proceedings against the critics, we documented in detail in Spreitenbach criminalises the right to petition .Spreitenbach criminalises the right to petition documented in detail.

The hunting fair slipped through every inspection

The most important finding appears right in the first answers. The Swiss Hunting Fair of 7 and 8 March 2026 was not reported to the Veterinary Service in advance. There was no knowledge of any presentation of live animals. No inspections were carried out on site. And neither for the hunting fair nor for the sport fishing fair of 2026 does the Veterinary Service hold any official documents whatsoever.

This clearly proves what we wrote after the event on killing as a leisure pastime . An event that stages weapons, trophies and hunting tourism in a hall marketed as environmental education slipped entirely past the enforcement of animal welfare law. No form, no condition, no inspection, no file. Hobby hunting has established itself as an event, and it is precisely this mechanism of normalisation that is the subject of our article Hobby hunting as an event .on killing as a leisure pastime written.Hobby hunting as an event.

At the Terra Expo the authority takes action, at the hunting fair it does not

In fairness, the picture also includes the fact that the veterinary service is not idle everywhere. For the Terra Expo 2026 the dates were reviewed and an exhibition permit was issued. At such events the service carries out random and unannounced inspections, objects to deficiencies, and in the case of repeated or serious violations examines further measures, up to exhibition bans and criminal complaints.

But then comes the decisive sentence. Such measures have so far only been taken in isolated cases, namely in connection with cat shows. With the reptile markets, against which our petition against animal cruelty at the Umwelt Arena is likewise directed, no comparable intervention has apparently taken place. That carries considerable weight, because the Swiss animal welfare organisation STS estimates that there are around 60’000 cruel and thus criminal reptile keepings in Switzerland, with the Umwelt Arena as a hub. Why the authority applies its own instruments to cats, but not to a documented mass problem with reptiles, remains open.

A municipality that prefers to file complaints rather than answer

This shifts the focus back to the municipality. At the communal level, according to the veterinary service, there is no general obligation to report events involving animals. Events requiring a permit are notified through the ordinary procedure. It is precisely for this reason that hundreds of citizens turned to the host municipality, because they assumed that the municipal council bears responsibility for what happens within the municipal territory.

Instead of taking up these concerns, the municipal council criminalised them. The criminal complaint with the Baden public prosecutor was filed by mayor Markus Mötteli (Die Mitte) on behalf of the municipal council. The 850 emails went to the administration as well as to the four council members Mötteli, deputy mayor Doris Schmid-Hofer (FDP) and the two independent councillors Adrian Mayr and Mike Heggli. These same four people left our three letters unanswered. It was not the content of the emails that was objected to, but their number. This is a perfect example of perpetrator-victim reversal. Those who make grievances public end up in the crosshairs of the justice system, while the event that triggered the protest passes through without a single trace of animal welfare law. Experts know this approach as SLAPP, a lawsuit that does not aim at a victory in court but at silencing criticism. Our article shows how the Umwelt Arena plays its own sustainability brand off against animal welfare How the Umwelt Arena Spreitenbach legitimises animal cruelty.

Violence was part of the programme

Anyone seeking the benchmark for the authorities' reaction should include the events of the trade fair weekend itself. On 8 March 2026, the HUNT Watch activist Olivier Bieli was attacked at the neck in front of the Umwelt Arena; in the run-up, fantasies of killing even circulated in hobby hunter forums. We have compiled the documented chain of such assaults in Violence by hobby hunters against animal welfare advocates.

The weighting speaks for itself. A physical assault on a person demonstrating peacefully prompted no criminal complaint from the municipality. 850 emails from people concerned about animal welfare, however, did.

What remains

The letter from the veterinary service is one piece of the mosaic, but a telling one. It confirms that the hunting trade fair was able to take place without any animal welfare oversight whatsoever, and through the comparison with the Terra Expo it makes clear that the authorities can indeed act when they want to. The Umwelt Arena, meanwhile, continues to insist that it is not a moral authority but a place of discourse. Yet anyone who gives a hunting trade fair space, promotion and the label of sustainability is making a decision, and that decision is anything but neutral.

We are staying on the case. The request for access to the files was only partially granted and in anonymised form; the organiser of the Terra Expo opposed any disclosure. The open questions to the municipality of Spreitenbach also remain unanswered. The municipal council will likely only answer them when it has to. The deadline expired on 27 May 2026; the municipality did not respond. This is a breach of the law.

Further information: Crime and hunting · Dossier on hunting and animal welfare · Hunting lobby dossier