Bavaria wants to prevent the federal government’s planned ban on controversial tethering in cattle farming through a Federal Council initiative. State Chancellor Florian Herrmann (CSU) said on Tuesday after a cabinet meeting that the current draft animal protection law was “absolutely unacceptable” from a Bavarian perspective. “Because it represents a frontal attack on cattle farming, on dairy farming in Bavaria, which is known to be structured on a rural basis with many, especially medium-sized and smaller farms, for which the question of existence will then seriously arise.”
According to Herrmann, the draft bill stipulates that tethering should be banned with a transition period of five years. When kept in tethers, the animals are tied up in the stable all year round; the practice is very controversial among animal rights activists.
With the draft, the traffic light government in the federal government is undercutting its own plans from the coalition agreement by five years, said Herrmann. Actually, a ban was mentioned in ten years. If the current practice is ruled out in five years, many farms in Bavaria would be threatened, as tethering is the “economic backbone” of the farmers. “So this is not about structural change, but rather a structural break, which we fear here,” said Herrmann.
He accused the federal government of trying to force an “ideological project” with its head against the wall. Bavaria is committed to change through promotional approaches, not through bans. In addition to free stall housing, tethered housing is still a widespread housing system, says Herrmann. This form of farming is still practiced in around 17,300 dairy farms across Germany, which is around 35 percent of the farms. Many of these companies could not easily meet new requirements due to settlement development.
In the coalition agreement, the SPD, Greens and FDP agreed to close gaps in the livestock regulations and improve the animal protection law. In addition to the ban on tethering, this also includes an obligation to take video recordings in slaughterhouses and stricter requirements for interventions such as shortening the curly tails of piglets. The slaughter of heavily pregnant sheep and goats should also be banned.