In view of the pending withdrawal by the Berlin Senate of the application for a review of the provisions of the Animal Welfare Livestock Farming Ordinance, the German Animal Welfare Federation has sent a letter to the 2nd Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court as a precautionary measure. The legal questions raised had not become obsolete due to subsequent changes in the law.
In January 2019, the state of Berlin filed an application with the Federal Constitutional Court to review regulations from the Animal Welfare Livestock Farming Ordinance. The statutory minimum standards for pig farming are largely incompatible with the Animal Welfare Act and contradict the state objective of animal welfare enshrined in the Basic Law. "In practice, nothing has changed in the fact that many pigs do not have sufficient space to move around or stretch out. The slatted floors continue to cause mechanical injuries," says Thomas Schröder, President of the German Animal Welfare Federation.
The question of whether the current practice of pig farming is compatible with higher-level legislation is also highly relevant from a consumer protection perspective, according to Schröder: "There are now a large number of labels for forms of husbandry. Food retailers want to sell meat that has been produced in a more animal-friendly way and many consumers also prefer meat that has been produced to higher standards than the legal requirements prescribe." The German Animal Welfare Federation continues to rely on the court's established case law that the abstract review of standards does not depend on the interests of the applicant, but solely on the question of whether a legal principle under review is valid or invalid.
