Switzerland rejects plan to ban ‘factory farming’

Swiss voters have rejected a proposal to ban intensive farming in a referendum held on 25 September to establish whether Switzerland’s strict animal welfare legislation needs to be further tightened.

Switzerland rejects plan to ban ‘factory farming’
Switzerland turns down proposal to enshrine more safeguards for animal treatment in their constitution.
Photo: FW Archive
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Provisional results in the referendum, run according to the Swiss system of direct democracy, showed that 62,86% of voters were against the proposal to enshrine the protection of the dignity of farm animals such as cattle, chickens and pigs in the country’s constitution.

According to Time magazine, Switzerland already had some of the strictest animal welfare regulations in the world, with many of these introduced through the direct democracy tool of popular initiatives.

“Its long history of animal protection laws dates as far back as 1893, when a popular initiative made it illegal to slaughter animals without first anaesthetising them. In 1978, the country passed the Animal Welfare Act, which prohibits inflicting pain on animals without justification.

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“[…] and in 1996, [it] became the first country in the world to outlaw battery cages for laying hens,” the report said.

These kinds of initiatives were being seen across Europe and the US, where a rising concern for animal welfare was going hand in hand with increased awareness of the impact of agriculture on the environment, especially with regard to climate change.

The Swiss referendum followed hot on the heels of a regulation introduced in Spain in August requiring video surveillance inside abattoirs to ensure best practices were being followed.

Shortly afterwards, in early September, the Dutch city of Haarlem banned advertisements for meat, Time said.

In the US, Arizona became the latest state to ban battery cages for hens, and a petition calling for a similar measure in the EU, led by the Compassionate World Farming organisation, managed to secure the necessary one million signatures from citizens across the 27 member states to “trigger a proposal from the European Commission next year”.

Time reported that Alice di Concetto, founder of the European Institute for Animal Law and Policy, said that the European Commission would be using the opportunity of the cage proposal “to revise all EU farm animal welfare legislation.

“So, there are other measures that hopefully will be included”, such as stopping chick grinding, a common method used on egg farms to kill male chicks soon after they hatch, as well as new limitations on the transportation of livestock for slaughter, she said.

Industry analysts were, however, describing the fact that Switzerland was taking the lead in attempting to eradicate intensive farming as “quite ironic”, when considering the 32 000-head feedlots where over 40% of the beef consumed in the US were produced.

By comparison, the average dairy farm in Switzerland had just 24 cows (compared with 300 in the US and 250 in Germany).

However, supporters of the initiative said that over the past two decades, the average Swiss farm had increased in size, and some aspects of the welfare legislation had either been watered down or left unenforced.

Kurt Brunner, who farms 40km west of Zurich and was supporting the initiative said he had seen what the growing consolidation of farms and the commodification of their products had meant for farmers and the animals they raise.

“The bigger farms in Switzerland are not so sustainable; neither environmentally nor economically,” he said.