It has now been almost half a year since Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) presented his new cabinet and the new tasks of his ministers to the state parliament. Under point four he announced: “Responsibility for veterinary inspections and the corresponding enforcement on farms, including animal protection when keeping farm animals, is changing from the State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection to the State Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism. (…) The veterinary system as a whole and the rest remains with the State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection.”
It has now emerged that the change of responsibility has still not been completed. But that’s not all. The officials in the house of Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber (CSU) and Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber (Free Voters) apparently got so confused in their working group meetings that the state association of civil servant veterinarians (LbT), in which the official veterinarians are organized, recently reported that the whole thing had been “dropped for now by those in charge politically.” It is not known whether and when it will be initiated again.
The splitting up of the veterinary authorities is one of Prime Minister Söder’s most controversial decisions. And not just among the official veterinarians themselves. But especially in the animal protection scene. Friedrich Mülln from Soko Tierschutz, who has uncovered numerous acts of animal cruelty on farms in Bavaria, speaks of a “first-class election gift from the CSU to the agricultural lobby.” He is not the only one who believes that veterinary inspections on farms should be carried out as independently as possible from the agricultural administration – in order to avoid any suspicion of possible influence. Mülln is convinced that the fact that these controls in Bavaria are now subordinated to the Ministry of Agriculture is “inevitably at the expense of animal protection and also consumer protection”. Mülln had actually assumed that “the Free State would strengthen veterinary controls after the state elections”.
The change of responsibility goes back to an initiative by the farmers’ association. He’s been asking for it for years. “The fear of laxer controls is unfounded,” said farmers’ president Günther Felßner at the time. “We expect an improvement if the expertise from the agricultural administration is incorporated into it in the future.” The association also said that it was “about being on equal terms between the farmers and the official veterinarians”. In the past there have been repeated “inappropriate incidents” during controls. Of course, violations of animal welfare must be stopped. But they want “fair cooperation and a sensible tone”. Felßner and Söder sealed the change of responsibility in the “Future Agreement on Agriculture” shortly before the state elections in September 2023.
Meanwhile, the official veterinarians are hanging in the air, so to speak. They not only fear for their independence and credibility. Rather, they cannot imagine how they would be able to manage all their tasks if some of them actually had to switch to agricultural administration. The official veterinarians are not only responsible for stable inspections on farms, for which the Ministry of Agriculture is now responsible. But also for the fight against animal diseases such as bird flu, the monitoring of animal foods and many other tasks, all of which remain the responsibility of the Ministry of the Environment.
The district administrators have criticized Söder’s plans from the start
However, the veterinary authorities at the district offices are already very small. Most have three to five official veterinarians, only a few have six or seven. In the past they were barely able to keep up with the work, and the Supreme Court of Auditors has repeatedly criticized the Free State for this. The LbT chairman and head of the veterinary office in the Traunstein district, Jürgen Schmidt, says: “The proposed relocation completely contradicts the work and control organization at our offices. That’s why no employees can be moved back and forth at the offices unless you want to paralyze all work at the veterinary offices.” The district administrators also criticized Söder’s plans from the outset and demanded that the change of responsibility should under no circumstances lead to a weakening of the veterinary offices’ personnel.
Nevertheless, until recently the Ministry of Agriculture obviously did not want to give up its idea that some of the official veterinarians would have to move under its responsibility. At least that’s what insiders report, because there are no official statements on this from either there or the Ministry of the Environment. “The discussions are ongoing. The details of the reform are currently still being worked on,” is the only thing a spokesman for the Environment Ministry said about the status of things. Agriculture Minister Kaniber’s spokesman made a similar statement. Meanwhile, insiders say that Kaniber and Environment Minister Glauber himself will have to cut the “Gordian knot” between their houses.
Meanwhile, they are becoming impatient at the farmers’ association. “The change of responsibility has been a decision for almost nine months,” says farmer president Felßner. “Two ministries should be able to organize themselves accordingly during this time.”