The German liberal party, FDP, no longer opposes an animal welfare levy on meat products, a new position paper unanimously welcomed by the Green coalition partner and stakeholders revealed.

Read the original German article here.

The FDP is open to financing state subsidies for more animal welfare through an additional, earmarked levy, according to a new position paper on the future of animal husbandry published by the party’s parliamentary group of Lower Saxony on Monday (15 August).

Until now, the party had strictly rejected an animal welfare levy. In return, the liberals want German livestock farmers to be better protected from disadvantages within the EU’s common market.

To ensure ‘reliable financial support’ for farmers in the transition to more animal welfare, an ‘animal welfare fund’ should be set up, which would be fed by an ‘earmarked animal welfare levy’, the paper states.

In other words, traders should have to levy a tax on meat sold in Germany.

Initially, the animal welfare levy was proposed as a tool to finance state aid to restructure animal husbandry and improve conditions by an expert network known as the Borchert Commission, which had been appointed by former Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner.

Since the commission presented its final report regarding the levy in 2020, animal welfare and environmental organisations have been insisting on the implementation of the proposals for the restructuring of animal husbandry.

Klöckner’s successor, current Green Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir, presented his proposal for a mandatory animal welfare label in June. So far, however, the coalition partners, including the FDP and the Greens, have been unable to agree on a funding concept for more animal welfare. The issue had also been left out of the coalition agreement.

The third and biggest coalition partner, Socialist SPD, has previously come out in favour of the levy, but has not been actively pushing for its introduction.

Towards a compromise

Coalition partners, notably the Greens, have welcomed the FDP’s position shift.

According to the food and agriculture spokesperson of the Green parliamentary group and former agriculture minister Renate Künast, the FDP’s paper paves the way for the restructuring of livestock farming.

“We very much welcome the fact that the FDP has followed the demands of minister Özdemir and the Greens and abandoned its opposition to adequate funding for the conversion of livestock housing,” said Künast.

This is “an important support for more animal welfare and fair competition,” she added.

The paper also received positive returns from several associations.

It goes “in the right direction”, Bernhard Krüsken, Secretary General of the German Farmers’ Association, told EURACTIV Germany.

The FDP federal association must now take up the proposal, said Krüsken. “Time is pressing.”

Krüsken also spoke of the crisis-fuelled pork production sector.

To stem its exodus from Germany, the animal welfare levy must be accompanied by mandatory labelling of husbandry and origin, as well as adjustments in building and immission control law, he added.

According to the animal welfare organisation PROVIEH, the paper also brings the federal government “a big step closer” to the restructuring of animal husbandry. It can now “follow up with deeds for a real transformation of animal husbandry,” explained the organisation’s specialist for farm animals, Anne Hamester.

“Only with sufficient and secure funding will statutory minimum standards be raised to the necessary level,” she added

Almost a first in the EU

Should the governing parties indeed agree on the introduction of the animal welfare levy, Germany would only be the second country in the EU to introduce a product-specific tax on meat, according to a recent report commissioned by the EU executive, which looked into fiscal measures applied to food across the EU.

The only EU member state to have previously introduced anything similar is Denmark, which in 2011 introduced an excise tax on certain food groups with a high content of saturated fat, including meat alongside dairy or margarine, for instance. The tax was in place until late 2012.

However, the country’s decision to include meat products was not voluntary, but came only after the European Commission deemed the exemption of meat an infringement on the bloc’s state aid rules.

EU competition

Meanwhile, in return for its loosening position on the animal welfare label, the German liberals’ position paper calls for the competitive disadvantages of German livestock farmers – especially in the pig market – to be eliminated at the EU level.

“Demand for pork is declining, while at the same time farmers have to contend with massive, sometimes contradictory requirements that often go well beyond the standards of other European countries,” explained the agricultural policy spokesman of Lower Saxony’s FDP state parliamentary group, Hermann Grupe, the day the paper was published.

This puts German pig farmers at a competitive disadvantage in the European market, he said, noting the reduction in pig farming in Germany and increase in other countries.

The paper is thus calling for a moratorium on national requirements, according to which there should be “no new requirements whatsoever” that would “further disadvantage German agriculture in European competition”.

In this context, the parliamentary group also believes that the animal welfare levy should primarily serve to compensate for additional costs caused at the national level through higher standards and thus ensure the European competitiveness of the industry.

“Financial compensation for competitive disadvantages” could thus also be waived if EU standards are harmonised, the paper writes.

Source: Euractiv.com