Ramiswil: When 124 dogs count and 86 million animals do not

In the Ramiswil case, the Swiss animal welfare organisation (STS) filed a criminal complaint and a supervisory complaint. The accusation: the Solothurn authorities killed 124 dogs without assessing, for each individual animal, whether killing was really the last resort. In its legal submissions, the STS invokes the dignity of the animal, its intrinsic value and the principle that killing is only permissible as a measure of last resort. These are powerful, correct statements. They raise just one uncomfortable question: why do they apply to 124 dogs, but not to the more than 86 million “farm animals” that the STS simultaneously oversees with its label compass?

What happened in Ramiswil

On 6 and 7 November 2025, the veterinary service of the canton of Solothurn cleared the Bodenhof farm in Ramiswil. Found there were 124 dogs, 43 horses and two goats. All 124 dogs were killed, 122 of them by euthanasia and two more with a firearm after they had fled into a wooded area. The decision to kill all the dogs was made on the very day of the inspection, without any thorough assessment phase between the appraisal of the situation and the decision.

The investigation report published on 30 June 2026 paints a picture that does not support the authorities' justification. According to the expert opinion of Prof. Dr. med. vet. Simone Schuller, the majority of the dogs were in astonishingly good general condition; around 59 per cent of the assessable animals showed a normal nutritional state, and from a veterinary perspective immediate euthanasia was justified for only two dogs. For all the other animals, the killing was subsequently justified with a lack of socialisation, safety considerations and allegedly absent housing options.

The principles invoked by the STS

The criminal complaint by the STS is remarkable in its ethical grounding. It argues not merely on the basis of procedural errors, but on the intrinsic worth of every single animal. Killing is the most severe possible intervention against an animal and is therefore only permissible as a last resort. On the lack of case-by-case assessment, the STS states verbatim:

«The dogs were thus not assessed as individual living beings with their own worth, but as part of a population treated in a blanket manner. It is precisely in this that the concrete suspicion of a disregard for animal dignity lies.»

The STS goes further. It expressly rejects the notion that mere membership of a breed or type of dog could justify a killing. What matters is solely the individual behaviour, the state of health, the capacity for socialisation and the placeability of the individual animal. In the case of puppies and young dogs, the blanket assumption of an inability to be socialised requires particular explanation. And killing must not serve the swift resolution of an administrative problem, otherwise it approaches wanton killing.

These are principles that align with a consistent animal rights position: every animal is an individual with its own worth, none may be killed as long as an alternative exists, and killing must not be legitimised by blanket attribution to a group.

The same principles, applied to 86 million animals

In 2025, over 86 million “livestock” animals were slaughtered in Switzerland. That is around 236,621 animals per day, 9,859 per hour, 164 per minute. Compared with the previous year, 40,636 more animals were killed.

None of these animals enjoy what the STS demands in Ramiswil. There is no individual case assessment as to whether a particular chicken might have gone on living. There is no examination of alternatives before killing. There is no weighing of interests in which the animal's interest in its own life is set against the reasons for its killing. In the case of pigs, cattle and chickens, the socially and economically assigned category of «farm animal» becomes the precondition for their breeding, use and killing. No individual assessment of their interest in continued life takes place, precisely the assessment that the STS explicitly demands for dogs.

Instead of an individual case assessment, the STS offers these animals its label compass. It rates animal products in four categories from «very good» to «unsatisfactory», based on 14 criteria from husbandry to slaughter. It does not ask whether a sentient individual may be killed for an avoidable product, but only under what conditions. This is the core of the criticism we already set out in the article «Label compass STS: animal welfare administers killing»: a label can improve details of husbandry, but it does not save a single animal from its intended death.

A moral double standard

The contrast can be traced line by line.

For the dogs in Ramiswil	For the animals in agriculture
Each animal is to be assessed as an individual with its own worth.	The animal is treated as part of a production stock.
Killing is permissible only as a last resort, after examining alternatives.	Killing is the economic endpoint envisaged from the very beginning.
Breed membership does not justify killing.	Membership of the «farm animal» group is the sole reason for killing.
A missing individual case assessment can trigger a criminal complaint.	An individual case assessment is systemically not provided for.
The STS speaks of disregard for animal dignity.	The STS awards the rating «very good».

This distinction cannot be justified by the capacity to suffer. Dogs, pigs, cattle, goats and chickens can all feel pain, fear and stress. The difference lies solely in the role assigned to them by society: the dog is regarded as a family member, the pig as food, the chicken as a means of production. The term for this is speciesism, the unequal treatment of living beings solely on the basis of their species.

Ramiswil does not present this double standard as an abstract accusation, but as the practice of the same organisation, signed by the same person. STS President Peter V. Kunz signs the criminal complaint demanding the right to life and case-by-case justice for 124 dogs. The same organisation awards quality seals for a system in which 86 million animals die every year without any individual assessment.

The STS takes itself at its word

This is not about reproaching the STS for its Ramiswil intervention. It is right. When the state seizes and kills animals, that must never become an administrative routine; every killing must be individually assessed, professionally justified and genuinely the last resort. The STS is entirely right to demand this.

The point is a different one: in its legal submissions, the STS has formulated the language and the principles of a consistent animal rights position. It has written that every animal is an individual with its own worth, that belonging to a group cannot be grounds for killing, that killing must remain the very last of all options. Anyone who means these sentences seriously for 124 dogs cannot answer the routine death of 86 million other animals with a four-point scale. The answer is then not better categories for meat products, but the question of why the lives of these animals are made into an available commodity in the first place.

Ramiswil is thus more than an official scandal. It is the moment in which the country's largest animal welfare association involuntarily writes down which principles ought actually to apply, and at the same time shows how selectively it applies them.

The STS Label Compass claims to make «animal welfare» transparent and comparable. Yet its best category remains within a system whose outcome is already predetermined: the animal is used and killed. «Very good» therefore does not mean that the animal's life is protected. It merely means that the conditions before the intended killing are rated better compared to poorer forms of production. It is precisely this shift that turns a question of rights into a question of consumer choice.

Sources

• Schweizer Tierschutz STS: criminal complaint and supervisory complaint in the Ramiswil case, 14 August 2026.
• Canton of Solothurn: External investigation into the Ramiswil animal welfare case, published on 30 June 2026.
• SRF: «Criminal complaint in the Ramiswil case: animal welfare organisation reports Solothurn cantonal veterinarian», 14 August 2026.
• Schweizer Tierschutz STS: media release and methodology of the STS Label Compass, 8 July 2026.
• Proviande slaughter statistics 2025, compiled by Swissveg.
• Wild beim Wild: «Label Compass STS: animal welfare administers the killing».