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According to the coalition agreement, there should be higher penalties for violations of the Animal Welfare Act. So far there is not even a draft law. According to animal rights activists, there are systematic problems, as a data project shows.
Almost every two weeks, serious cruelty to animals becomes public. Animal rights activists complain that the legal consequences are too small. Four animal welfare organizations have documented the scandals they uncovered over the past seven years on a map. She suits him ARD-Magazine fact exclusively before.
A total of 24 penalties were documented in the 163 cases. Most of these are fines. A ban on keeping or handling animals was issued five times. Three courts imposed a suspended sentence.
The Bad Iburg case
An example: In 2018, the animal protection association “SOKO Tierschutz” revealed hundreds of illegal slaughterings at a slaughterhouse in Bad Iburg in Lower Saxony. The footage shows serious crimes. Sick cattle were systematically dragged from transporters with chains on their legs and through cable winches. Animals that can no longer walk may neither be transported nor slaughtered. For the head of Soko animal welfare, Friedrich Mülln, it is the biggest animal welfare scandal in recent years.
The trial took place in August 2022: Heinrich B., the former manager of the slaughterhouse, and two former employees were accused. The accused received suspended sentences and fines. The verdict alone lists 58 individual abuses in which the former managing director was involved.
“I left the courtroom angry because I couldn’t stand it,” said Mülln after the verdict was announced. “In recent years I have always clung to the fact that if there is any justice for the animals in any of these cruel cases, then in the Bad Iburg case, because with this bestiality of the deeds there is simply no other choice than to make the maximum penalty .” According to the law, cruelty to animals is punishable by a maximum of three years in prison. However, such a penalty has never been imposed.
In addition to the penalty, there are legal costs
The legal processing of the case has now been completed. The head of Germany’s only central office for agricultural crimes, Dirk Bredemeier, from the Oldenburg public prosecutor’s office, defended the verdict: Heinrich B. and his colleagues had no previous convictions, they had regretted their crimes and it was assumed that they would not commit any new ones.
“You also have to take into account that in addition to the actual sentence, i.e. the banning of the perpetrator, there is also the fact that he has been placed on probation and that he has to bear the costs of the proceedings and his own attorney’s fees,” said Bredemeier. Such a procedure could involve a five-figure sum.
Animal rights activists criticize low penalties
Mülln didn’t notice any remorse during the trial. He criticizes the frequent impunity after animal welfare scandals and doubts that such judgments deterred the industry. “After the trials, after so many years, everyone breathes a sigh of relief and knows very well: If little happens to them – these torturers, you can’t describe it any other way – then you can actually do whatever you want.”
In view of the many documented cases, it is “basically a disaster,” says Jan Peifer from the German Animal Welfare Office. “We keep bringing the scandals into the public eye, politicians get upset about it, and in the end nothing happens.” The animal rights organization also worked on the data project “Animal Welfare Scandals: Map of Cruelty to Animals”. “That’s exactly what this card shows, that in a very small percentage of cases, there is a prosecution at all, in most cases it amounts to a fine. And of course that’s crazy.”
Lack of implementation of criminal law
The animal protection criminal law is mainly on paper and there is a fundamental problem behind it, criticizes the lawyer Johanna Hahn from the University of Leipzig. The criminal law expert published an empirical study last year in which she also examined the outcome of almost 120 animal welfare proceedings in agricultural livestock farming. Result: A large part was discontinued.
In addition: “If there are charges, then it’s cases of small businesses or employees at the lower hierarchical level,” explains Hahn. “Of course that’s a big problem, because most of the violations that employees commit are structural problems.” There were errors in the organization of the company, or stunning devices did not work. “The individual employee can do little to change that. You would have to go to the upper management level. But that doesn’t happen.”
In the coalition agreement detained
The problem had also arrived in Berlin: According to the coalition agreement, the Greens’ Minister of Agriculture, Cem Özdemir, was supposed to tighten the law. Animal rights activists criticize that so far not even a draft is available. fact received the answer to a request from the ministry: They continue to plan higher fines and higher penalties for violating the Animal Welfare Act.
“It was negotiated in the coalition agreement that the sentence should be increased to five years. That would be an important sign,” says the head of Soko animal protection, Mülln. It was also said that the animal protection law, which has hitherto been more of an administrative nature, should go into the penal code. “These are all good things. But the traffic light coalition has campaigned with animal welfare so far, but forgot about animal welfare the moment the government was formed. And nothing has happened since.”