Compromise on the Box: The Sow needs to get out – but only a bit

200 inches in length, 65 inches in width: the controversial Case looks for sows. In the metal the animals are kept slack, both for the collection of semen as well as to the birth of the piglets. Only in the weeks in between sows in a group move. For decades, the case status is controversial.

Julia Löhr

business correspondent in Berlin.

the regulation on the livestock, the pigs can freely lie, and their limbs stretch out. Animal rights activists not to criticize, however, that in practice this is often not the case. On Friday, the Federal Council has brought now, after a long struggle, a Reform of the Sows on the way to give the animals at least a little more security in Movement.

Specifically, the agreement provides that sows must be significantly shorter than that previously fixed in the box stand. Instead, around 70 days per "production cycle" is meant to be in the future, only a maximum of five days. Apart from that, the sows are kept in groups of at least five square meters of space.

After a transitional period of eight years, the case stand in the Inseminate should not be used at all, in the farrowing area after a transitional period of 15 years and a maximum of five days. This Transition to the Green, which join the government in eleven Federal States had time limits, especially before a challenge. The Union group had called the rooms for a longer period of time.

animal welfare levy to Finance the stable tags

"This decision is very painful for the farmers and in farming structures hard," said farmers ' Association, President Joachim Rukwied to the decision of the länder chamber. The consumer organization food watch, criticized: "The Federal Council adopted decision has to do with animal protection, almost nothing."

of the Need of Reform had become, according to a ruling of the administrative court of Magdeburg. This had already been criticised for 2015, many of the stables in violation of applicable law. This criticism was recently repeated, the German ethics Council. "In practice, there is still often a small box stands," - said in a statement to the Council.