Germany: There is not enough demand for animal welfare pigs
ISN received increasing amounts of feedback from companies that participate in the Animal Welfare Initiative (ITW) and whose supply contracts have been terminated. These were mostly supply contracts with Tönnies slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse justifies this with the insufficient demand for animal welfare meat and the resulting lack of payment from the meat buyers. This lower demand for animal welfare meat was unanimously confirmed to us by various slaughterhouses. The weakening sale of pork in the food retail sector is having an increasing impact because the majority of the meat from animals kept according to the conditions of the Animal Welfare Initiative is marketed in the fresh meat area of the German food retail sector.
"If you want to focus even more on animal welfare in the future, you have to ensure today that the pig farmers get the money they need for their pigs! Only then will the companies have a basis for being able to plan for the longer term", is how ISN Chairman Heinrich Dierkes assesses the situation.
It is not the first time that pig farmers who have invested money to take part in the Animal Welfare Initiative are being left out in the cold when it comes to the necessary payment to compensate for the additional costs. And even if the companies reset their production back to the old standard, they are left with a large part of their additional costs - and this is precisely at a time when production costs have risen sharply and the companies are suffering high financial losses. Confidence in reliable payment for animal welfare measures is dwindling massively.
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