Podcast episode: Hunting, animal welfare and conflicts with nature

The editorial team addresses the question of where applicable law and ethical standards diverge in the treatment of animals: in hobby hunting, in zoos and on farms, as well as in dealing with species that could actually protect us.

At the heart is the debate around hobby hunting and murder: legally the answer is clear-cut, morally it remains contested. Legal does not automatically mean legitimate, and legal systems have historically always changed under the pressure of ethics and science. This is substantiated by behavioural biology, recognised capacity for suffering and the scale of more than 85 million animals killed annually for meat production in Switzerland. The canton of Geneva, which abolished private hunting as early as 1974, serves as a counter-model.

Further topics: illegal hare coursing in Great Britain as an example of a lack of control, the recruitment efforts of JagdSchweiz at schools in the light of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and Basel-Stadt, which is considering forgoing the regular fox hunt.

Added to this are the failed octopus farm project by Nueva Pescanova on Gran Canaria, the breeding scandal at Nuremberg Zoo involving the Guinea baboons, and finally the beaver as a natural fire protection, whose killing Switzerland has permitted since 2025, even though voters had rejected such an extension in 2020.