Nos Amis Les Animaux 85480
NALA 85480
Our aim: to sensibilise and inform the local population on animal welfare, work on prevention and help abandoned animals.
ID: 815374539253-44
Lobbying Activity
2 Apr 2021
The basis of this proposal is reducing the dependency of the EU on other countries for its plant protein supply. This is based on https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/food-farming-
fisheries/plants_and_plant_products/documents/report-plant-proteins-com2018-757-final_en.pdf
However the major problem with this report is the assumption that it's desirable and even possible to continue with the large scale raising of livestock. Any actions taken should take into account the unavoidable reality that climate change is a major problem and that livestock makes a significant contribution. As it is focused on animal feed the report ignores the contribution of cereals to the supply of plant protein even though for a significant proportion of the human population they are their major source of protein. The report therefore only looks at what it considers high protein plant crops and acknowledges that 93% of them are fed to animals.
It is not a secret that livestock are a source of proteins, but they don't create them. They get them from the food that they eat. The conversion process means that you get less proteins out of an animal than you feed to it. As the topic under consultation shows there are also significant amounts of protein in the waste products after slaughter.
So there are effectively four issues: climate change, loss of biodiversity, dependency on third countries for plant proteins and disposal of waste animal products. The proposal under discussion is perhaps an elegant solution to the last two issues but it ignores the much more important first two issues.
There is also a wiser, more elegant solution... reduce the number of animals that need to be fed. We have already seen initiatives in member states to reduce the size of their flocks and herds by offering farmers a "soft landing": compensation for permanently reducing the number of animals that they raise. Encouraging this would be a more sustainable and safer alternative to authorising inter species consumption. This proposal will inevitably reduce costs for the livestock sector which will lead to more consumption of meat.. exactly what we should be trying to discourage. In addition, as the current pandemic shows, zoonoses that cross the species barrier pose a threat to us all. Although the risk of a new TSE is considered low, what about other diseases?
For the above reasons we give a negative opinion to this proposal and instead encourage the DGs implicated in this proposal to look at the bigger picture and work together towards a more sustainable and resilient approach.
Read full responseResponse to Land use, land use change and forestry – review of EU rules
25 Nov 2020
Until now meat and dairy production have been exempt from the emissions trading scheme. This is surprising as the emissions involved are relatively accurately known. It may be impractical to implement it at producer level, because each individual farm only contributes a small amount to the total, so collecting the relatively small amounts would not be cost effective. A much easier way would be a tax on the final product. In line with the current ETS rates it would amount to about 10 cents per Kilo of chicken. It has the additional advantage of sending a signal to consumers to reduce consumption. It does have the disadvantage that there is no incentive for the individual producers to reduce their own emissions. However, for non-ruminents the majority of emissions are from their feed and waste and there is not much that can be done to reduce the amount of feed given to the animals.
Ruminants' emissions include large amounts of methane. There are techniques that have the potential to reduce the emissions and these could be incentivised at individual producer level.
It is clear that raising livestock makes a large contribution to climate change. A recent study published in Science https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/705.full suggests that unless the world significantly reduces its production of animal products it will be practically impossible to keep global temperature rise below 2°C, let alone 1.5°C.
It is inevitable that the livestock industry will have to shrink and that many farmers will have to stop raising livestock. Every year the number of livestock farms falls as the smaller ones cannot compete with the largest ones. There seems to be an endless cycle of escalation as a farm which was considered big and profitable a few years ago is overshadowed by an even bigger. This cycle invariably brings job losses as fewer employees are tasked with looking after more and more animals. It also leads to a waste of resources and investment money. A farmer may invest large sums of money to increase the capacity of his farm, only to discover that instead of having a profitable lifetime of a couple of decades, it is already outmoded within a few years.
The EU can help to break this cycle by offering farmers a soft landing. This could be accomplished by rewarding them for giving up animal farming e.g. by giving them a certain sum of money for each animal by which they permantly reduce their production capacity. Their land could then be used for production of food or energy crops.
In some cases, it would even be worthwhile to buy the land and let it rewild naturally. This would allow the creation of carbon sinks and favour biodiversity. See for example http://forestsfromfarms.org/
These measures could be financed by the tax on animal products and also on savings from the CAP budget.
Association Nos Amis Les Animaux 85480
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