Animal Advocacy Food Transition
AAFT
Our organization is dedicated to raising awareness about the treatment of animals, with the ultimate goal of reducing their suffering, particularly within the context of animal agriculture.
ID: 254222197671-80
Lobbying Activity
Response to EU cardiovascular health plan
3 Sept 2025
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the single largest cause of death in Europe, responsible for millions of preventable deaths every year and placing a heavy burden on healthcare systems. While medical advances have improved treatment, prevention remains the most effective strategy. Diet is one of the strongest determinants of cardiovascular risk and Europes current food system is pushing consumers in the wrong direction. High intakes of meat, full-fat dairy, and other animal products rich in saturated fats and cholesterol are strongly associated with increased rates of heart disease and stroke. Despite this evidence, animal farming activities continue to dominate EU agriculture and subsidies, shaping a food environment where animal products are cheap, abundant, and overconsumed despite their proven health risks. By contrast, diets centered on fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and whole grains significantly reduce cardiovascular risk. Plant-rich eating patterns lower blood pressure, improve cholesterol profiles, reduce obesity rates, and help prevent type 2 diabetes. Promoting such diets would not only improve population health but also cut healthcare costs, while at the same time addressing environmental and animal welfare concerns in agriculture. Crucially, prevention avoids the need for costly interventions such as lifelong medication, emergency surgery and prolonged hospitalisation, which consume a large share of healthcare budgets. Healthier diets deliver benefits far beyond cardiovascular protection. They lower the burden of obesity, diabetes, cancer and other non-communicable diseases. Beyond health, shifting towards plant-based diets opens important economic opportunities. The global market for plant-based proteins and foods is growing rapidly, creating space for EU producers to innovate and lead. Supporting European-grown legumes, fruits, and vegetables would reduce reliance on imported soy and cereals, strengthen food security, and create new value chains. To protect cardiovascular health, the EU must integrate dietary prevention into its food and agriculture policies. We recommend: Redirecting subsidies away from the production and promotion of animal products towards legumes, fruit, vegetables, and other plant proteins that promote healthy diets. Scaling up protein diversification, supporting EU-grown pulses and plant-based alternatives that reduce dependence on imported soy and animal protein. Leveraging public procurement, ensuring that schools, hospitals, and canteens serve more plant-based meals to create stable demand for healthier foods while normalising healthier diets. Revising school food schemes, so all children, particularly from vulnerable backgrounds, have access to free or subsidised healthy, sustainable food, including plant-based options. Coordinating food-based dietary guidelines with agricultural policy, so that what farmers produce supports what doctors recommend. Aligning EU agri-food promotion policy with health objectives by supporting healthy foods and ending subsidies for unhealthy product marketing.
Read full responseResponse to EU Civil Society Strategy
23 Aug 2025
The European Union finds itself at a defining moment. Faced with growing authoritarian tendencies, disinformation, and the shrinking of civic space, it must stand firm as a stronghold of democracy, transparency, and science-based policymaking. Civil society organisations (CSOs), and particularly those representing the voiceless such as animals, embody the principles of participatory democracy. Their oversight of powerful actors and evidence-based interventions safeguard not only the interests they represent but also the credibility of European institutions. Across the EU, however, animal-welfare NGOs increasingly encounter legal, political, and social pressures designed to silence their work. Surveillance of activists, attempts at strategic lawsuits, denial of legal standing, and obstruction of investigations all reveal a pattern of shrinking democratic space. These measures do not merely affect individual organisations; they undermine accountability, weaken scientific scrutiny, and erode public trust in institutions. Animal-welfare advocacy rests on solid ground: the science of sentience and suffering is well established and recognised in EU law. Yet without legal voice or procedural standing, animals rely on NGOs to bring evidence into courts and policy debates. These organisations act as intermediaries, ensuring that oversight does not stop where state monitoring fails. The growing discussion of frameworks comparable to an Aarhus Convention for animals illustrates how crucial it is to formalise this role. Protecting the space in which NGOs operate is safeguarding democratic pluralism itself. Civil society must be free to challenge entrenched interests, to inform policy with scientific knowledge, and to expose violations without intimidation. If the EU is to remain a model of democratic integrity, it must defend civic actors from harassment, ensure that policymaking is transparent and grounded in evidence, and recognise the legitimacy of those who advocate on behalf of the voiceless. This is a shared struggle. The pressures faced by animal-welfare NGOs mirror those confronting many other parts of civil society. Responding to them is not simply a matter of protecting organisations, but of affirming that European democracy will not be eroded by corporate or political pressure. The EU has the responsibilityand the opportunityto show that it stands with civil society, with science, and with transparency. Only by doing so can it remain true to its foundational values and continue to serve as a global reference point for reasoned, democratic law-making.
Read full responseResponse to Modernisation of the EU legislation for on-farm animal welfare for certain animals
16 Jul 2025
The revision of on-farm animal welfare legislation cannot be a peripheral task in the next Commissions agenda it must be a central pillar of the EUs response to the intersecting crises in agriculture, public health, environmental sustainability, and democratic legitimacy. Animal welfare is not a marginal concern: it is overwhelmingly supported by EU citizens, embedded in the Treaties, and essential for building food systems that are resilient, ethical, and economically viable. Addressing it meaningfully contributes to solving challenges in farmer income, AMR, climate action, and consumer trust and is a measure of the EUs capacity to translate values into law. Scientific consensus has confirmed that farmed animals are sentient beings with cognitive and emotional capacities. EFSAs recent opinions reaffirm that widely used practices such as cages for laying hens, farrowing crates for sows, and individual housing for calves are incompatible with essential behavioural and welfare needs. Yet these practices remain legal under outdated legislation. Likewise, the routine killing of day-old male chicks by maceration or gas continues across the EU, despite ethical concerns and the availability of scientifically validated alternatives such as in-ovo sexing. Several Member States have already ruled to ban this practice, but EU-wide binding rules are urgently needed to ensure fairness and coherence. Citizens are demanding change. The European Citizens Initiative End the Cage Age, supported by 1.4 million validated signatures across all Member States, received a clear commitment from the European Commission. Honouring this commitment by including all species concerned and setting a binding timeline is essential for the democratic functioning of the Union. It is also a key step to align EU law with Article 13 of the TFEU, which recognises animals as sentient beings. Moreover, the EU must ensure that imported animal products comply with equivalent welfare standards. Allowing imports from production systems that would be illegal within the EU undermines both internal standards and producers who comply with them. It contradicts basic principles of legal coherence and fairness, and weakens the EUs credibility as a global standard-setter for sustainable and ethical trade. Upcoming trade negotiations and existing agreements must integrate enforceable animal welfare criteria. Improved welfare also delivers cross-cutting benefits: it reduces antibiotic use and AMR, lowers zoonotic risks, contributes to climate and biodiversity goals, and supports economic resilience through higher-value, lower-impact farming models. The One HealthOne Welfare approach, endorsed by scientific institutions and policymakers alike, provides a robust framework for integrated policy reform. To meet this moment, the Commission must deliver a legislative package that is science-based, enforceable, and coherent across species and sectors. This includes phasing out cages, banning the killing of day-old chicks, closing the regulatory gap for fish welfare, shifting to outcome-based Animal-Based Measures (ABMs), strengthening enforcement, and setting clear equivalence requirements for imports. The tools exist as do the public mandate and legal obligation. The time to act decisively and ambitiously came.
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