Fair Agriculture: The Price of Happy Pigs

There is a plan to help protesting farmers and suffering animals. It wouldn't be too expensive for consumers.

AAfter a long effort, Cem Özdemir, the Green Party's agriculture minister, responded to the farmers' angry protests with a long-overdue proposal. In the FAS he spoke out in favor of introducing an animal welfare tax, i.e. a surcharge on the price of meat, milk, butter, cheese and eggs. In this way, the necessary money is to be raised to pay the costs of converting stables and improving animal husbandry.

This had nothing directly to do with the agricultural diesel subsidy of around 500 million euros per year, which the farmers rolled out with their tractors to receive. Their leaders reacted correspondingly stubbornly to the minister's maneuver. Özdemir also presented his case very late. And in the proposal that the government factions recently submitted to the Bundestag, animal welfare is just one point of many, without a specific definition of the levy.