Animal welfare: in with the good meat!

Since 2002, it is in the basic law: "The state shall protect the natural foundations of life and animals." The sentence makes no difference between wild animals, domestic animals and farm animals. The reality is different. If red kite or hazel mice are in danger, then the courts put a stop to the construction of wind power plants and apartment houses.

Sebastian Balzter

editor in the economy of the Frankfurt General Sunday newspaper.

But for turkeys and cattle, the millions are to be fattened in the German stables, there is today not even a statutory minimum level of animal protection. And where there are rules, they describe precarious States: A three-quarter square feet of space in the barn for a full-grown pig. In the chicken coop for up to nine animals on a square meter. The outlet is not provided, the cattle comes in doubt, never to fresh air.

meat from Germany, which is in other ways an impressive success story. 25 years ago to around 400,000 tons of poultry and one Million tonnes of pig meat were imported from abroad, in order to make the citizen satisfied. In Germany itself, enough animals were not in favour of simply fattened and slaughtered. Then a rapid development began. With technical innovations, with logistical precision and with a tough calculation of rolled-up entrepreneurs like Clemens Tönnies and Paul-Heinz Wesjohann, of the man behind the poultry brand Wiesenhof, the industry.

The production grew to a total of more than a third. The meat was also extremely affordable for the consumer and in most cases also safe food. Germany rose from being a Large importer to a major meat exporter in the European Union: Around a Million tonnes of meat from German Lands were sold last year abroad. A Billion-Dollar Business.

The export model does not work

But it goes no further. The more than 1500 Corona cases in the slaughterhouses of Tönnies and Wesjohann, which throw a strong light on the working conditions of many foreign workers in the industry, not the biggest Problem. On the so-called contracts for work and services, on which the criticism is directed, can do without the companies, without having to use a cane. The wages in the meat is hardly more than 10 percent of the total cost.

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test If this Item has now risen by about a fifth, as is to be expected due to the announced ban of temporary Agency work, the total cost to less than 2 percent. There is, therefore, only a few cents per Schnitzel. The export model is pushed to its limits, its meat are magnates for some time, been aware of it. Clemens Tönnies, for example, put so much money in the construction of farms and factories in Russia. And in China, so far the most important buyer of pork feet and other residues that are currently being rammed huge stables and meat plants out of the ground. With them, the German suppliers will not be able to compete on duration, price, whether with or without temporary workers.