Animal welfare wrecked

How an increasingly assertive meat industry helped derail a historic democratic demand to improve animal welfare standards in the EU

Nearly one and a half million EU citizens asked the EU to ban the use of cages in animal farming in 2020. The proposal was met with broad political support: the European Parliament endorsed the resolution with 558 votes in favour, 37 against, 85 abstentions. The EU Commission officially committed to follow up with a suite of regulations in 2023.

The set of four laws were supposed to end practices such as keeping farm animals in cages, slaughtering day-old chicks, and the sale and production of fur.

However, all but one have been dropped, including the ban on caged farming, from the European Commission’s 2024 work programme, even though the EU’s latest survey showed that an overwhelming majority of people desire them.

Three EU officials familiar with the file recounted aggressive lobbying by groups such as the European Livestock Voice (ELV) and its partner associations to water down parts of the laws and attack scientific opinions they felt did not align with their goals. One official said “this was the first time” in nearly a decade of experience that they had felt such pressure from a farming association.

METHODS

Reporting on lobbying is notoriously challenging: it happens behind closed doors, little action is involved and the scenes – offices – are boring. But it is essential to expose where private interests are trying to capture the policy-making process.

The lack of transparency and mandatory reporting in the EU when it comes to lobbying make it particularly difficult to scrutinise who is pushing for what policies, according to the author of a recent study that compared the subsidies given to livestock versus novel technologies in the EU and US.

So we put a team together that was able to gather evidence on how the meat lobby is developing strategies against a backdrop of increasing societal pressure for change. What kind of tactics do they aspire to? What campaigns do they deploy and how have they been able to assert so much pressure on the EU Commission?

The investigation started with a leak – an audio file indicating that an environmental journalist was in the pay of the meat industry and contemplating importing US-style campaigning tactics to the EU. It signalled a willingness to deploy new and more aggressive methods and helped us identify a few key players and entities.

Based on the leak we send a series of freedom of information (FOI) requests to relevant bodies including the European Food Safety Agency EFSA, the EU Commission and DG AGRI and SANTE, the Commission departments responsible for agricultural policy and food safety, respectively.

But since the influencing mostly happens behind closed doors and often in informal settings outside a sphere in which FOI rules can enforce transparency, we had to rely to a great extent on human sources. We gathered a team with a large network in the EU bubble which helped us check findings and corroborate quotes and allegations.

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STORYLINES

If there is one issue that seems to unite the citizens of the European Union, it is animal welfare. Surveys and consultations have consistently shown that they care about the welfare of farm animals, want to see higher standards, and are willing to pay more for products derived this way.

But that means providing farm animals with more space, better housing and shorter journeys when transporting them. For industrial livestock farming and its major supporter Copa-Cogeca, this was a threat to its chokehold on agricultural policy-making.

So much so that in an October 2021 presentation by Copa-Cogeca’s communications director, one objective shot up the agenda: ethical questions about livestock – to be considered first and foremost as communication concerns.

What followed was a carefully crafted campaign to undermine science, co-opt a journalist and pressure officials at the EU to abandon these improvements.

One EU official said ‘this was the first time’ they have experienced such pressure from the farming industry.

A relatively new lobby group that counts CopaCogeca as their founding member – European Livestock Voice (ELV) – was notably active, two EU officials said. ELV was set up in Sep 2019, a year after the launch of the campaign to ban cages, as an activist-style network, using tactics borrowed from NGOs.

Documents obtained through freedom of information (FOI) showed ELV partner associations urging EU officials to ‘resist the pressure from NGOs [as] NGO perspectives do not reflect the views of the broad public’.

One EU insider said lobbyists ‘targeted senior levels in the Commission’ at strategic moments in the legislative process ‘using privileged channels’.

After these meets, high level attitudes towards the legislation became ‘extremely negative’, the official added.

Leaked documents show that this negativity is status quo at DG AGRI, the department at the European Commission responsible for agricultural policy.

An ex DG AGRI officer described difficulty even stating facts: ‘I couldn’t even say things like, “Agriculture has a large share in producing greenhouse gases”. It was like, “Oh, no, I don’t bring that up.”’

Exclusive audio from a closed door Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA) summit, which has close links to the American meat industry, hinted at ELV’s strategy. The group’s campaign manager Andrea Bertaglio gave a speech at the summit, which was held in the U.S. in May, and said ELV is setting up an ‘entire communications strategy’ around animal welfare legislation.

Bertaglio presents himself on social media as an environmental journalist, an identity he upholds in many of the conferences he attends as a speaker. Yet his real identity is a different one. He told the AAA audience that his “official identity” is as an environmental journalist, but “my real job now is to work to inform the public about livestock production”.

Questioning science is part of their approach, said Bertaglio: ‘I’d like to go to the scientists. The ones publishing papers against meat… against livestock and say, “Why are you saying that? Data? Fact?” So that’s the next step’

In a Zoom interview with The Guardian and EU Scream, media partners for this investigation, he denied being a lobbyist or questioning science and said he is “in transition” from writing for newspapers to communication work.

“But still, my job is more (like) journalists because what I’m doing with European Livestock Voice is informing, writing articles in a balanced way, interviewing people, experts,” he said. It also includes clearing up misunderstandings arising from Western Europeans’ tendency to “humanise animals a bit too much”, he added.

Having delayed – or potentially abandoned – three out of four laws on animal welfare, the EU Commission is now at odds with its own commitment and public consensus.

A survey released this month found 84% of Europeans want more protection for animal welfare. 60% are even happy to pay more for it.

Left hanging in the balance are the welfare of hundreds of millions of farm animals in the EU and ultimately, the consumers.