1^{LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION}

Introduction
During the past fifty years, the Dutch livestock farming industry has developed into a sector in which around 500 million animals are killed each year. The animals have been increasingly more intensively exploited. They have been removed from their natural environments, given less space and have started to grow unnaturally fast as a result of breeding programmes, animal feed and veterinary drugs. Broilers now grow so fast that within just a few weeks their legs are too weak to carry their own bodyweight. Cows produce four times as much milk than 100 years ago and chickens lay eight times as many eggs as in the past. The price of animal produce is unethically low (e.g. an egg costs the same as 60 years ago). As a result of which both the animals and the farmers find themselves in an economic stranglehold that has become increasingly more uncomfortable. There is nothing for the animals to experience in their overcrowded stalls, which means that they suffer from stress and boredom and display serious abnormal behaviour, such as cannibalism. Farmers are barely able to keep their heads above water due to the marginal bulk production that has now become standard. It is therefore necessary for animals, farmers and citizens that agriculture is transformed into a high quality sector, which receives a fair price for its products.

The Agricultural Economic Institute (LEI) has calculated that the average Dutch family spends 12% of its income on food. In 1970, this was still 30%. For food derived entirely from organic agricultural production it is necessary that we devote 16% of our income to food; this may be converted to the equivalent value of two holiday days a year. The consumer will then eat fair food, the animals will have a better life and the farmers will earn a decent living.

Factory farming also has significant, negative consequences for developing countries and the environment. The environment has suffered greatly as a result of production: the flow of waste is enormous (e.g. ammonia, phosphates), the scarce freshwater supplies in the world are drying up and the tropical rainforest is being decimated on a huge scale for (genetically manipulated) soybean plantations for the production of animal feed. Transporting agricultural and food products back and forth across the globe also places a significant demand in finite raw materials. The transport of live animals across the world causes considerable animal suffering and should thus be drastically restricted. Livestock markets and transport are also accompanied by great risks for both human and animal in the form of serious epidemics and animal disease crises. The intensive and large-scale livestock industry lies at the root of large-scale epizootics. Massive meat consumption and the accompanying factory farming methods present an increasingly greater risk to public health. The H5N1 epidemic predicted by World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations will cost the lives of hundreds of million people, purely as a consequence of the mass production of animal (poultry) products and the trade, which is associated with it.

Livestock production must be organised in a natural, ecological and regional fashion, whereby animals are able to display their natural behaviour once more. As its starting point, the Party for the Animals takes the five generally accepted (but seldom implemented) freedoms for animals, which were defined in 1965 by the British Brambell Committee.

Animals should be free:

1. from thirst, hunger and malnutrition
2. from physical and physiological discomfort;
3. from pain, injury and disease
4. from anxiety and chronic stress
5. to display their natural (species) behaviour

Improving farm animal welfare
Farm animals should be kept and cared for in accordance with their nature and behaviour at the minimum at level of the norms of organic livestock farming. If the way in which animals are kept creates problems, then the solution should be sought in the improvement of the livestock housing system and not by adapting the animal by preventatively removing body parts. The physical modification of animals can never be justified by problems that derive from production systems or market forces.

Housing and care

Surgical interventions

Putting the brakes on increased productivity

Trade in and transport of animals

Killing livestock animals
According to the ‘Killing animals Order’ of the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, the slaughter of animals must take place ‘after the preceding stunning because this is how it can be ensured with the greatest degree of certainty that the animal may be prevented from suffering pain or stress’. Unfortunately, slaughterhouses operate rather differently in practice.

In many abattoirs, chickens are stunned using a current that is too weak. This is for business economic reasons. It is better for the meat quality, because it reduces extravasation in the meat. As a result, millions of chickens each year are killed without first having been stunned.

In addition, slaughter without stunning for religious reasons poses a significant problem. On the basis of article 6 of the constitution, which determines freedom of religion, animals may be slaughtered according to the Jewish and Islamic traditions: without stunning and thus with all the attendant pain and stress.

Given that other countries are less inclined to make exceptions to their own legislation, no ritually slaughtered meat is produced there. The Dutch abattoirs have thus found a gap in the market and export a proportion of the ritually slaughtered animals in the Netherlands to these countries. Today 20% of animals in Dutch slaughterhouses are ritually killed. Not all of this meat ends up as halal or kosher meat on the shelves of Dutch or foreign supermarkets. Ritually slaughtered meat that cannot be sold as halal meat often ends up being sold as ‘ordinary’ meat in the shops. The unsuspecting meat-eater who assumes that the meat he is eating has been stunned and slaughtered according to Dutch legislation is thus deliberately misled.

Measures

Combating animal disease
The Party for the Animals is against the mass destruction of healthy animals during outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as Foot-and-Mouth Disease and Classical Swine Fever. The Party thus promotes preventative vaccination and no pre-emptive culling. However, drastic changes are also necessary to ensure the prevention of animal disease. The likelihood of disease outbreaks and their consequences can be reduced through the regionalisation of livestock production, the eradication of long-distance transports and a reduction in the numbers of animals kept. Animal disease is an age-old problem, but it is the way in which animal production is currently organised that means that draconian measures are adopted for economic reasons. In many cases, the remedy has proved to be far more deadly than the disease ever could be.

Measures

Ban on breeding specific production animals

Measures

Governmental support for a more animal-friendly livestock farming industry
The more animal-friendly forms of livestock production are weighed down by unfair competition. Currently the societal costs of production are only partially taken into account in the cost price and inspections and obligations relating to quality marks put considerable pressure on the more animal-friendly livestock-keeping systems. As a consequence, products from the ordinary livestock industry are priced unethically low in relation to products from the organic sector. As long as this unbalanced growth continues to exist, the government must compensate the transition to more animal-friendly production systems. A complete policy transformation will not be easy for the farmers, which is why compensation schemes are necessary. Farmers are also victims of a policy that has misguidedly stimulated factory farming production for many years. This is why they should receive a positive and financial incentive from the government to qualitatively improve their operations. The radical restructuring of the factory farming industry is crucial. Comparable reorganisation has already taken place in the clothing manufacture and textile industries, the shipbuilding industry and coalmining. The transition can be compensated via interim financial support.

Measures